Romanian Bourse Indices Tumble Amid Global Woes

The BET-FI index, which tracks Romania's five regional investment funds, SIFs, tumbled by 9.81% to 10,012.26 points. The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, lost 7.84% to 2,596.30.

The composite BET-C index dropped 8.28% to 1,949.42. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, slumped by 6.66% to 6,067.73.

"There’s no specific reason [for the falls], it's just the continuous global downward trend that we've been witnessing for more than a year now, which has some steeper falls from time to time," one broker told SeeNews.

The BVB suspended trading for about 30 minutes until 1110 local time (0910 GMT) due to sharp falls in stock prices. This is the third time this month that the BVB suspends trading for the same reason.

The European markets were falling heavily on Friday, but managed to temper the falls at the end of trading. The Asian markets were also heavily down with Japan’s Nikkei index hitting a 26-year low on Monday. The U.S. stocks also opened lower.

BVB's turnover fell to 23.4 million lei ($7.8 million/6.3 million euro) from 26.5 million lei on Friday. The number of shares traded on Monday rose to 90.1 million from 86.6 million on Friday.

Blue-chip bank BRD dropped by 11.49% to 6.55 lei in the day’s highest turnover of 3.8 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia lost 4.95% to 0.499 lei in the day’s second highest turnover of 3.7 million lei on Monday.

Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom fell by 12.84% to 0.129 lei in the day's third largest turnover of 2.7 million lei. Global oil prices hit a 17-month low on Monday, falling under $60 (48.3 euro) per barrel.

SIF 3 Transilvania led the falls among the SIFs, plunging by 14.92% to 0.268 lei in deals worth 1.5 million lei. Blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare dipped by 9.5% to 0.02 lei on deals worth a total of 299,000 lei.

Gas transmission company Transgaz dropped by 12.56% to 97.5 lei in a turnover of 631,000 lei, and power grid operator Transelectrica lost 5.22% to 10.9 lei on deals worth 513,000 lei.

The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid blue-chip companies, including the SIFs, sank 7.97% to 243.66 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, lost 10.95% to 303.03.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, lost 2.17% to 2,371.52. Turnover on RASDAQ fell to 1.9 million lei from 3.2 million on Friday.

The Romanian stock market, along with the rest of the bourses in southeastern Europe, has been losing ground for more than a month now, dragged down by panic selling on international markets following bank collapses in the United States and Europe.

(1 euro = 3.7311 Romanian lei)