Romanian Stock Indices Fall in Listless Trading

The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, fell 2.2% to 2,956.12. The BET-FI index, which tracks Romania's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, closed down 3.51% at 14,236.31 points.

The composite BET-C index lost 2.31% to 2,153.54. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, was down 1.72% to 6,539.66.

Nothing seems to be able to move the market, as investors are already used to bad news, one broker told SeeNews, adding that there is no clear trend as market movements are determined by very low liquidity.

BVB's turnover fell slightly to 10.4 million lei ($3.4 million/2.7 million euro) from 10.7 million lei on Monday. The number of shares traded on Tuesday increased to 75 million from 66 million on the previous day.

Blue-chip real estate developer Impact Developer & Contractor plunged 14.84% to 0.035 lei in the day’s highest turnover of 1.4 million lei. “The company enjoyed a strong rally for five straight days, which was speculative, and the sharper falls now are more or less expected,” the broker said.

SIF 2 Moldova was down 4.0% to 0.6 lei in the day’s second largest turnover of 1.3 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia lost 3.47% to 0.695 lei in the day’s third largest turnover of 967,000 lei.

Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom shed 0.56% to 0.177 lei in a 373,000 lei turnover. Blue-chip bank BRD depreciated by 2.44% to 8.0 lei in 290,000 lei turnover. Romanian oil and gas prospecting company Dafora dropped 10% to 0.0468 lei on Wednesday.

The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid blue-chip companies, including the SIFs, fell 2.28% to 290.77 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, lost 2.96% to 365.12.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, was down by 0.89% to 2,283.01. Turnover on RASDAQ rose to 2.0 million lei from 1.5 million lei on Tuesday.

(1 euro = 3.8495 Romanian lei)