Bucharest Stock Indices Advance

The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, rose 1.29% to 4,903.98 points. The BET-FI, which tracks the country's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, gained 2.7% to 24,340.08 points.

The composite BET-C index added 1.27% to 2,816.66. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, closed 1.5% higher at 10,176.40.

The Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, was closed on Tuesday for Romania's National Day.

Amid higher liquidity, the bourse opened straight up today, triggered by yesterday's gains on global markets. The indices hit the day's highest levels in the first half an hour and then started to cool down. BET-FI was the best performer on Wednesday, surpassing the 24,000 points treshold, Prime Transaction brokerage said in a daily stock market report on its website.

BVB's turnover rose to 18.8 million lei ($6.7 million/4.4 million euro) from 14.4 million lei on Monday. The volume of traded shares increased to 30 million from 19 million on Monday.

SIF 5 Oltenia closed 2.36% higher at 1.3 lei in the day's largest turnover of 5.1 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova jumped 2.68% to 1.15 lei on deals worth a total of 3.5 million lei, Wednesday’s second highest turnover. Blue-chip bank, BRD, advanced 1.48% to 13.7 lei on the regular market in the session’s third largest turnover of 1.5 million lei.

SIF 3 Transilvania added 2.21% to 0.695 lei in deals worth 764,000 lei, and SIF 1 Banat Crisana appreciated by 3.6% to 1.15 lei in 928,000 lei turnover.

The other blue-chip lender, Banca Transilvania, climbed 0.88% to 2.28 lei in deals worth a total of 615,000 lei. Austria’s Erste ended 2.06% up at 119.1 lei in 572,000 lei turnover.

Blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare shed 0.76% to 0.065 lei in deals worth 381,000 lei, while blue-chip oil and gas group OMV Petrom rose 2.75%  to 0.262 lei in 297,000 lei turnover.

The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, ended up 1.68% at 480.19 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, went up 1.28% to 612.58 points.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, rose 0.73% to 2,219.39. Turnover on the RASDAQ decreased to 685,000 lei from 970,000 lei on Monday.

(1 euro = 4.2464 Romanian lei)