The Glorietta 2 blast

It was lunch break when we got news that there was an explosion at the Glorietta Mall, Makati. What we only had at first were text messages and breaking news at the Bloomberg and Reuters terminals ... no details. I even tried asking the brokers if they have news/details since they are located in Makati. No help there. It would be minutes before the news stations air their coverage.

Initially, everyone thought it was caused by an LPG tank accidentally exploding. There were speculations that it was a terrorist act, though. We at the desk wished the police would make an announcement before 2:30PM, so that there wouldn't be too much speculation when the afternoon session of USD/PHP trading starts.

Watching the police answer the reporters, it became apparent that they don't know damage control. They were saying words that would allow people to speculate the worst scenario. Media would eat those words up and report them in such a way that would cause more panic ... simply because "panic" sells.

Before trading started, a text message was being sent around by traders ... it was a bomb. It's a no-brainer that banks started buying dollars the moment trading started. Irony of the day? Before lunch, there were signs that BSP was protecting the dollar from breaching the 44.00 level. After lunch, BSP found itself protecting the peso. Good for them though, they bought dollars at the low and sold at the high.

All this talk about a bomb has created a bomb scare in PNB as well. By 5:30PM, the guards were asking all employees to leave. Hard to ignore that threat, considering that the Office of the Vice President and the USDA are housed in our building. Both are good targets for terrorists.