By Lee C. Chipongian The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said it registered $105 million of net foreign portfolio investments in October, reversing September’s $232-million net outflows. In a statement, the BSP said the net inflows in October resulted from the $1.25-billion inflows during the month versus $1.15-billion outflows. Compared to same time last year, the current results were also an improvement from October 2018's $67.83-million net outflows. The central bank said 81.9 percent of inflows went into listed stocks such as holding firms, banks, property companies, retail companies, and food, beverage and tobacco companies. About 18.1 percent were invested in peso government securities. Bulk or 73.9 percent of inflows came from investors in the United Kingdom, US, Singapore, Luxembourg, and Malaysia. According to the BSP, the local and global developments that influenced the movement of hot money during the period are: the US and China trade discussions; initial public offerings by firms in the industrial and services sectors; the BSP's decision to reduce the reserve requirement ratio for universal/commercial and thrift banks by 100 basis points; and further slowdown of headline inflation to 0.8 percent in October from 0.9 percent in September. Based on BSP data, total registered investments increased by 31.5 percent year-on-year while gross outflows were higher by 12.5 percent compared to the outflows in 2018. The outflows decreased in October compared to September’s $1.53 billion with US investors still the major beneficiary of these withdrawals with a 74.8 percent share of total.