05/11/2025
The Philippine Stock Exchange Today - Plummets to its lowest in the last 3 years!
As of 1:54pm today (Nov 5, 2025), the Philippine Stock Exchange Index (PSEi) is down by 78.49 points to 5,788.55 points, its lowest since July 1, 2022. Almost all stocks are in the red (meaning down) including those companies announcing good news i.e. Megaworld’s 9-month profit up by 14% to P18 Billion; Petron Corporation’s 9-month profit up by 37% to P9.7 Billion (see picture 1).
As finance and investment professionals, we always say that the stock market is a reflection of confidence in a country's economy. So a downturn in our PSEi despite a showing of growth in a number of PSEi-listed companies means that investors, especially foreign, have no confidence in the Philippine economy. The reasons may vary or a combination of stability of government policies, growth prospects, and confidence in political leadership.
Loss in Market Capitalization
The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has clarified recently that the “domestic” market capitalization of the PSE did not lose by P5 Trillion from December 2024 to as claimed by a former BSP official but by P273 Billion (see picture 2). This is still considered a significant decline considering the supposed growth prospects of our economy for 2025.
Our economic managers declared early this year that the economy will be growing between 5.5% to 6.5%. Hence, the PSEi should follow the same growth track. In the first two quarters, the companies listed in the local bourse have also been growing in terms of profitability, yet foreign or maybe even local investors are staying away from investing in the stock exchange because of lack of confidence and trust in the present political leadership. For the first two quarters of 2025, the gdp growth were at the lower end of the projection at 5.4% and 5.5% respectively.
Comparison in PSEi over the years
The PSEi today (Nov 5, 2025) is down almost 1,000 points compared to as of May 2022 (see picture 3), two months before the end of the Duterte administration. Even during the “covid 19” years, our PSEi never went below 6,370 points (April 1, 2021) and even went as high as 7,311 in February 2022.
It was during the Duterte administration where the PSEi reached its all-time high at 9,041 points in January 2018. One of the biggest jump in our index, year to year, was from 6,840 points in 2016 to 8,558 at the end of 2017 or a jump of 1,718 points in one year (see picture 4).
PSEi – worst performing stock exchange
Having monitored the PSE since 1995, being a consistent investor during its ups and downs, from the Asian financial crisis (1997) to the global financial crisis (2009) until today, our market usually follows the global trends, meaning if the major indices like the Dow Jones Industrial Index (US), Nikkei 225 (Japan), FTSE (UK) and the like are trending upwards, then generally, our index will also trend the same way. Unfortunately, the PSEi since the Marcos administration started in July 2022, has been moving in the other way.
As of this year, major stock indices have reached their all-time high – the DJIA hitting 47,000 points and the Nikkei 225 hitting 52,000 points – a few months back so does the stock exchanges in Southeast Asia i.e. Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia.
In an article published by Bloomberg, a respected global financial company, last November 3, 2025, “Asia Pacific stocks has jumped 72%” with the Jakarta Stock Exchange (Indonesia) surging by 82%. In the meantime, “the benchmark PSEi has tumbled by 20%” making it the worst performing exchange as monitored by Bloomberg.
Investment in the PSE - Extra Income for small investors
It has been a basic strategy in personal finance, that if you have extra savings, invest some of these in various investment instruments, one of which is the stock exchange. If the company you invest in by buying its shares via the stock market is growing, by all means your investment should be growing together with the company. But in our case, it has been in the reverse.
In July 2022, Megaworld stock was hovering between 2.30 to 2.50 per share. Despite the company growing over the last 3 years, the stock price as of Novemebr 2025 is P1.97-P2.00 per share. So if you invested in Megaworld shares three years ago worth P100,000, the value of your investment should be around P79,000 today, more or less. So much for investing our savings for a better future.
Of course, we can always reason out some other factors why the stock is not growing. And precisely, the growth of the shares is having confidence in the stock, the company, our economy, and political leadership of our country.
Trust and Confidence in the country’s leadership is key
We have to admit, we are in a political turmoil and instability which is affecting our economy. The current leadership in all branches of government is put into question - Does our local and foreign investors have full trust and confidence in our current leadership? The answer to that question can be indicatively answered by how our stock exchange performs in terms of liquidity and growth in market capitalization. The answer is clear.
Posted by Epimaco Densing III
