Profit taking is under way, analyst says

JAKARTA: Profit taking after earnings reports and announcement of dividend will potentially hamper Jakarta Composite Index (JCI), which measures the overall performance of Indonesian shares listed at Indonesia Stock Exchange, next week. The decreasing JCI is boosted by the negative sentiment from regional and global indeces.An analyst at PT Samuel Sekuritas Indonesia Joseph Pangaribuan said that JCI, historically, fell in May. Investors are no longer waiting for the dividend announcement and start realizing profit, he said.The announcement of US non-farm payrolls and unemployment rate tonight is dragging the regional indeces, Pangaribuan told Bisnis, this afternoon.The pace of hiring in US, citing Bloomberg, probably cooled in April as companies curbed spending in the face of rising raw-material costs, economists said ahead of the release of government report today.Payrolls rose by 185,000 workers last month compared with a 216,000 advance in March, according to the median forecast of 86 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The jobless rate may have held at 8.8%, the lowest level in two years. Estimates in the Bloomberg survey for April range from 8.6% to 9%.US service industries expanded in April at the slowest pace in eight months as companies cut back in response to higher energy costs, according to the Institute for Supply Managements index of US non-manufacturing companies published on May 4.The concern of the rise in the core inflation, according to Pangaribuan, hindered the performance of JCI.Core inflation, excluding volatile food and fuel prices, accelerated to 4.62% year-on-year in April, up from 4.45% in March. (NOM)