November 7 (SeeNews) - The Romanian stock indices ended mixed on Wednesday in falling turnovers, as a downgrade in the country outlook by Standard & Poor's weighed on the market, brokers said.
"The S&P changed its outlook on Romania to negative and it affected all four indices. Romanan investors seem to be the sole investors remaining on the market now and they are unable to stir positive developments on the market. Investors are stockpiling funds ahead of the Transgaz' IPO in late November," one broker told SeeNews.
Global rating agency Standard & Poor's on Monday revised its outlook on EU newcomer Romania to negative to reflect the government's limited policy response to the country's rapidly growing external imbalances, against the background of increasingly difficult global credit conditions.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange's (BVB) blue-chip BET index ended 0.35% higher at 9,552.41 points. The composite BET-C index lost 0.63% to 6,579.01 points and the BET-FI, which tracks the country's regionally-defined investment funds, the SIFs, dropped 2.11% to 74,415.11 points. The ROTX index of Romania's nine most liquid stocks, a joint index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) and the Vienna Stock Exchange, closed 0.58% higher at 21,078.31 points.
"The BET index was slightly up due to positive developments in trade in BRD and Rompetrol Rafinare and Petrom, but if we will look at the BET-C index, which reflects the market in general, we see the negative trend continues," the broker said.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom added 1.96% to 0.51 lei in 976,532 lei turnover. Blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare ended up 0.94% at 0.107 lei in 1.3 million lei of turnover. Commercial bank BRD, also a blue chip, grew 0.79% to 25.5 lei in 2.66 million lei turnover.
SIF2 Moldova was the most heavily traded stock in regular trading on the BVB on Wednesday, losing 2.05% to 3.34 lei in turnover of 5.76 million lei. Blue-chip bank Banca Transilvania closed unchanged at 0.855 lei in the second highest turnover of the day of 4.86 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia lost 2.17% to 4.06 lei in the day's third largest turnover of 4.73 million lei.
"I think we'll have recovery sessions by the end of this week, but in general the negative developments will continue," the broker said.
The BVB's overall volume fell to 33.05 million shares from 64.3 million on Tuesday. Stock turnover on the BVB more than halved to 32.5 million lei ($14.05 million/9.6 million euro) from 69.7 million lei on Tuesday.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, went 0.85% down to 4,652.57. Turnover on the RASDAQ market jumped to 111.1 million lei from the 17 million lei on Tuesday due to a deal in the shares of Romanian insurance company Asirom worth 98.2 million lei.
Asirom share closed 2.56% higher in regular trading in turnover of 1,112 lei.
Electric cable and wire maker Romcab was the most traded stock on the RASDAQ on Wednesday, closing unchanged at 10.5 lei in turnover of 2.5 million lei.
(1 euro =3.3964 Romanian lei)