The BET-FI, which tracks the country's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, was the worst-performing index, dropping 6.0% to 20,673.73 points. The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, fell 3.29% to 4,373.38 points.
The composite BET-C index lost 3.99% to 2,592.08 and the ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, was down 3.87% to 9,157.44.
“There was more aggressive selling, especially on the SIFs, which have moved closer to their support level of 20,000 points,” local brokerage Prime Transaction said in a daily note published on its website.
The other indices fell shortly after the open and saw no major movements during the day, same as on Tuesday.
BVB's turnover more than halved to 31.8 million lei ($11 million/7.4 million euro) from 65.6 million lei, including 34 million lei worth of bond trades, on Tuesday. The number of traded shares was up to 50.7 million from 48.55 million on Tuesday.
SIF 5 Oltenia lost 5.5% to 1.03 lei in the day's largest turnover of 7.5 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova shed 6.06% to 0.93 lei on deals worth 4.3 million lei, Wednesday’s second largest turnover. Blue-chip lender Banca Transilvania closed down 2.22% at 1.76 lei on the regular market in the session’s third largest turnover of 2.95 million lei.
The other blue-chip bank, BRD, slipped 5.65% to 11.7 lei in deals worth 2.4 million lei. SIF 1 Banat Crisana ended 5.65% lower at 1.0 lei in deals worth 2.38 million lei.
SIF 3 Transilvania lost 6.82% to 0.615 lei in 2.29 million lei turnover. Austria’s Erste Bank tumbled 5.93% to 115.7 lei in turnover of 1.28 million lei.
Blue-chip oil and gas group OMV Petrom slid 3.64% to 0.265 lei in 967,007 lei turnover and SIF 4 Muntenia lost 5.80% to 0.65 lei in deals worth 838,943 lei.
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, declined 4.34% to 421.50 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, was down 2.98% to 582.75 points.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, shed 1.14% to 2,196.28. Turnover on the RASDAQ fell to 1.25 million lei from 4.4 million lei on Tuesday.
(1 euro =4.2909 Romanian lei)
