BIZ BUZZ: What trillions? 

Trillion” has been quite the buzzword lately, especially with budget deliberations and economic data coming up.

But if you’re a close follower of capital market updates, or if you just happened to stumble upon social media posts lately, you’d know that there’s yet another hot topic.

Over the last week, a post has been circulating on Facebook about the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) supposedly losing up to P5 trillion in market capitalization since December 2024.

The operator of the local bourse was quick to dispel this post and the mammoth, destructive number.

In a strongly worded statement on Monday, PSE clarified that the domestic market capitalization was actually down by just P273.26 billion year-to-date, or 1.88 percent, to P14.3 trillion.

Meanwhile, total market capitalization, which includes shares of dually listed firms Sun Life Financial Inc., Del Monte Pacific Ltd. and Manulife Financial Corp., was down 4.43 percent, or P886.84 billion, to P19.12 trillion.

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Given this data, PSE infers that the Facebook poster may have actually compared domestic market capitalization to total market capitalization, which, as it vehemently highlights, is a big no-no.

“Deliberately comparing apples to oranges by comparing domestic market capitalization to total market capitalization is dishonest, if not malicious, and is clearly meant to provoke investors to lose confidence in the Philippine capital market and destabilize the economy,” PSE said in its statement.

Let’s hope this finally clears things up and doesn’t cause any further harm.