(Bloomberg) — The selloff in stocks fueled by the Middle East conflict provides a buying opportunity for the Philippines’ top pension fund as it weighs expanding its equities portfolio.
“I always believe that you buy when markets are not at their best,” Wick Veloso, president of the Government Service Insurance System, said in an interview in his Manila office on Monday. There “are opportunities for you to find the diamond in the rough,” he added.
The fund, which manages about 2 trillion pesos ($34.4 billion) in assets, 21% of which are in equities, may increase its stock holdings by another 1% if opportunities present themselves, said Veloso, who was chief executive officer of HSBC Holdings Plc’s Philippine unit from 2012 to 2018.
“When there’s fear in the market it’s the time for you to have the ability to discern the good, the bad and the ugly and take a look at what you will be able to take advantage of,” he said.
Veloso said he sees support for the the Philippine stock market’s benchmark index at around 6,100 points. It closed at 6,426.83 points on Monday, down 2.8% that was its sharpest slide since last April.
Global stocks tumbled as Iran retaliated against US-Israeli strikes that killed the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. President Donald Trump said the bombing campaign against Iran could last for weeks and called on the nation’s leaders to capitulate.
GSIS is the pension fund for nearly 3 million workers in the Southeast Asian nation’s public sector.
Veloso, who worked at HSBC for more than two decades before leading local lender Philippine National Bank, said telecoms, infrastructure and consumer companies are good bets in the Philippine equity market during times of volatility. The fund is also looking at investing in preferred shares of top local firms, given the dividends they provide.
“I want us to have predictable sources of revenue instead of quantifiable,” he said. GSIS pours about 72% of its assets in risk-free investments, of which 40% are allocated in government securities, according to Veloso.
The company posted 344.5 billion pesos in profit last year, up 6.4% from 2024 with assets rising 8.2% to 1.96 trillion pesos.
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