The stock market is supposed to be the most sensitive barometer of a country’s socio-political and socioeconomic conditions, but the benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange Index (PSEi) hardly moved on August 18, when the government announced that gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 7 percent in the second quarter of the year. It was the fastest growth rate of economic output since the fourth quarter of 2013, and probably the best performance in Asia.

From the standpoint of equity analysts and brokers, however, there was nothing spectacular about the second-quarter GDP, which measures the goods and services a country produced in a given period, because it was expected and within range of the government’s 6 to 7 percent target.

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