Bucharest Stock Indices End Mostly Down; Investment Funds Extend Gains, Dominate Trading

"Our bourse fell today reflecting the negative trend on the U.S. market overnight. But the SIFs reacted very quickly to the U.S. futures, which were strongly up today," one broker told SeeNews.

"After all, BVB managed to recover a little at the end of the session as some positive labour statistics came from the U.S."

The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, fell 0.2% to 4,862.67 points. The BET-FI, which tracks the SIFs, gained 2.02% to 25,618.03 points.

The composite BET-C index shed 0.24% to 2,817.22. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, closed 0.11% lower at 10,141.12.

BVB's turnover rose to 29.7 million lei ($10.5 million/7.0 million euro), including 2.5 million lei worth of bonds and 2.4 million worth of futures, from 26.3 million lei on Thursday. The volume of traded shares increased to 41.5 million from 35.5 million on Thursday. 

SIF 5 Oltenia closed 1.48% higher at 1.37 lei in the day's largest turnover of 6.7 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova jumped 3.33% to 1.24 lei on deals worth a total of 4.1 million lei, Friday’s second highest turnover. SIF 3 Transilvania advanced 2.11% to 0.725 lei on the regular market in the session’s third largest turnover of 2.2 million lei.

SIF 1 Banat Crisana gained 2.52% to 1.22 lei in deals worth 2.0 million lei, and SIF 4 Muntenia climbed 0.68% to 0.745 lei in 1.1 million lei turnover.

Blue-chip bank, BRD, ended unchanged at 14 lei in deals worth 1.4 million lei. The other blue-chip lender, Banca Transilvania, declined by 0.45% to 2.22 lei in deals worth a total of 1.4 million lei.

Blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare dipped 2.11% to 0.0602 lei in deals worth 952,000 lei

Pipeline builder Condmag ended flat at 0.7 lei in 713,000 lei turnover. Local producer of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polypropylene (PP) building materials Teraplast also closed unchanged at 0.615 lei in 563,000 lei turnover.

The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, ended up 0.35% at 485.11 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, went down 0.47% to 602.66 points.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, edged up 0.23% to 2,228.71. Turnover on the RASDAQ nearly halved to 1.9 million lei from 3.3 million lei on Thursday when 267,324 shares of cargo handling company Port Bazinul Nou changed hands for a combined 2.7 million lei in 50 transactions.

(1 euro = 4.2189 Romanian lei)