Bucharest Bourse Indices Slip Further in Higher Volumes

The blue-chip BET index of the BVB fell 3.44% to 4,043.22 points, while the BET-FI, which tracks the country's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, dropped 3.55% to 20,385.42 points.

The composite BET-C index lost 3.69% to 2,392.65 and the ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, ended 4.03% lower at 8,527.19.

“We’ve had a day of corrections in the context of a correction on the markets abroad. It’s very possible that these corrections could persist in the following days. We still don’t know if it’s only a correction or the start of a downward trend,” one broker told SeeNews.

BVB's turnover jumped to 56.7 million lei ($19 million/13.4 million euro) from 21.5 million lei on Tuesday, including 20 million lei worth of bonds. The number of traded shares increased to 60.8 million from 56.5 million on Tuesday.

Blue-chip lender Banca Transilvania closed 0.65% lower at 1.54 lei in the day's largest turnover of 5.8 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia sank 3.6% to 1.07 lei on deals worth 5.5 million lei, Wednesday’s second largest turnover.

The bourse's other blue-chip bank, BRD, tumbled 5.0% to 11.4 lei in a 4.6 million turnover, the session’s third largest. Austria’s Erste Bank lost 5.54% to 116.0 lei in turnover of 1.3 million lei.

Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom dropped 5.45% to 0.243 lei in a turnover of 1.0 million lei, while blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare was down 2.04% to 0.048 lei in 926,000 lei turnover.

SIF 3 Transilvania declined 4.13% to 0.58 lei in turnover of 3.3 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova slid 3.65% to 0.925 lei in deals worth 2.2 million lei.

SIF 4 Muntenia depreciated 3.76% to 0.64 lei in deals worth 773,000 lei, while SIF 1 Banat Crisana lost 2.5% to 0.975 lei in a 876,000 lei turnover.

The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, backed off 3.47% to 393.61 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, slumped 3.54% to 518.52 points.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, shed 0.61% to 2,058.28. Turnover on the RASDAQ surged to 1.8 million lei from 524,000 lei on Tuesday.

(1 euro = 4.2429 Romanian lei)