Romanian Stock Indices Bounce Back in Lower Volumes

The blue-chip BET index of the BVB closed 3.42% higher at 4,043.22 points. The BET-FI, which tracks the country’s five regional investment funds, the SIFs, gained 2.7% to 20,189.70 points.

The composite BET-C index rose 3.01% to 2,441.77, and the ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, climbed 3.24% to 8,475.18.

“We had very modest liquidity today with share turnover reaching only 13.7 million lei. Probably investors are skeptic about today’s gains and prefer to wait and see if they are sustainable,” one broker told SeeNews.

“Yesterday’s fall on the Shanghai’s bourse spilled over worldwide and once it rebounded today, the global markets followed suit.”

BVB’s turnover fell to 26.3 million lei ($8.8 million/6.2 million euro) on Thursday, including 12.6 million lei worth of bonds, from 33 million lei on Wednesday. The number of traded shares decreased to 26.1 million from 58.4 million on Wednesday.

SIF 5 Oltenia ended up 2.88% at 1.07 lei in Thursday’s largest turnover of 3.8 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova ended 3.45% higher at 0.9 lei on deals worth 1.63 million lei, the session's second highest turnover. Blue-chip bank BRD jumped 4.5% to 11.6 lei in the day’s third largest turnover of 1.6 million lei.

The bourse's other blue-chip lender, Banca Transilvania, advanced 3.85% to 1.35 lei in deals worth 711,000 lei. Erste Bank, the first foreign stock trading on the BVB, gained 2.34% to 113.8 lei in 1.35 million lei turnover.

Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom rose 3.17% to 0.26 lei on deals worth 406,000 lei, and blue-chip gas transmission company Transgaz climbed 3.81% to 158 lei in 526,000 lei turnover.

SIF 3 Transilvania was up 2.75% to 0.56 lei in 785,000 lei turnover, while SIF 1 Banat Crisana increased 2.09% to 0.975 lei in deals worth 639,000 lei. SIF 4 Muntenia ended 2.36% hgher at 0.65 lei in 386,000 lei turnover.

The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, jumped 3.11% to 391.45 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, added 2.54% to 534.57 points.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, shed 0.44% to 2,090.28. Turnover on the RASDAQ decreased to 753,000 lei from 825,000 lei on Wednesday.

(1 euro = 4.2364 Romanian lei)