September 17 (SeeNews) - The four indices of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) ended mixed on Monday amid low trading volumes with investors waiting for the Tuesday decision of the U.S. Federal Reserve on its key interest rate, brokers said.
The BVB's blue-chip BET index ended 0.01% higher to 9.936.24 points, while the composite BET-C index lost 0.13% to 6,786.19. The BET-FI index, which only tracks Romania's five regionally-defined investment funds, the SIFs, ended down 0.66% at 80,512.97 points.
The ROTX index of Romania's nine most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, remained unchanged at 21,880.60 points.
BVB turnover fell to 23.4 million lei ($9.6 million/6.9 million euro) from Friday's 30 million.
"The trading was in low volumes and two of the indices were slightly down, today sellers dominated on the market. The bourse waits to see what will happen on international markets," one broker told SeeNews.
Brokers said foreigners, who account for more than 80% of the investors operating on the BVB, have been standing aside, waiting for September 18 when the Federal Reserve is expected to cut its key reference rate amid financial market turmoil on global credit concerns.
"The decision could have as negative as positive influence on our market,"the broker said.
Aluminium products maker Altur was the most traded stock, closing up 0.63% at 0.161 lei in turnover of 3.98 million lei, as one of its major shareholders, investment fund SIF 5 Oltenia, withdrew from the company on Monday.
The fund has sold its remaining 8.52% stake in Altur, or 22.8 million shares, for 3.7 million lei. Last week SIF 5 Oltenia sold 8.82% of Altur.
Shares in SIF 5 Oltenia fell 1.15% to 4.3 lei in the second largest turnover of 3.06 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova came third in terms of turnover, ending down 2.25 % to 3.47 lei in turnover of 2.67 million lei.
Blue-chip bank BRD ended 1.09% lower at 27.2 lei in turnover of two million lei.
Oil group Petrom ended up 1.0% to 0.505 lei in turnover of 1.5 million lei.
Brokers said that interest in the BET Index Futures instrument that was launched last Friday on the BVB was pretty low because there were just a few operators on the BVB's futures market.
"I think that volumes will grow when it will be possible to trade with the BET-FI index on the futures market, because the blue-chip BET index is not very interesting for investors," the broker said.
Four BET futures contracts traded on Monday in a combined turnover of 39,751 lei. The near-month futures ended down 1.14% at 9,920.0. The end-December futures lost 0.90% to 9,960.0.
The Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, ended down 0.9% to 5,369.84. Turnover on the RASDAQ rose to 9.3 million lei from 8.18 million lei on Friday.
Romanian dairy Albalact was the most traded stock on the RASDAQ, losing 3.76% at 0.895 lei in turnover of 1.1 million lei.
(1 euro = 3.3848 Romanian lei)