The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will extend trading hours starting October 1 to try to boost trading volumes and match the hours of other Southeast Asian exchanges it will be linked with next year. This latest move by the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will boost turnover in the undersized market.
Trading now lasts just two hours and 40 minutes and closes at midday which is the shortest trading hours in the Asian market.
The extension from Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will come in 2 phases. Coming October, trading will extend from the current 9:30 a.m. to 12pm schedule to 9:30 to 1 p.m.
And starting from January 1 next year, the trading floor will be open between 9:30am and 12pm, and then from 1:30 to 3:30pm. The extension of trading hours will help smaller brokers by keeping its floor open and it will also give brokers some time for settlement, clearing and dealing with their own clients.
Thursday's announcement was the second move this year by the exchange to generate higher trading volumes.
The stock exchange decided it needed to extend trading hours to allow volume to increase rather than wait for volume before extending.
This is not the first time the stock exchange has extended its hours. Back in 2002 it was reverted to the current schedule in less than a year after volumes failed to pick up much.
In April, it ordered the 30 large companies making up its composite index to raise the proportion of their freely traded shares from 10 percent to 12 percent by September.
It said those that failed to comply with the higher free-float requirement would be excluded from the composite index.
There are just 249 companies listed on the Philippine stock market, and total daily turnover averaged only five billion pesos (US$116.3 million) this year, according to the exchange's website.
Fewer than half a million Filipinos, or 0.5 percent of the population, owned and traded stocks last year, it said.
But those few investors have done well recently.
The composite index rose to an all-time high of 4,439.61 points on July 5, up 5.68 percent this year after a rise of 37.6 percent in 2010.
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