November 21 (SeeNews) - The Romanian stock market lost ground on Wednesday for a fourth consecutive day as some investors continued to exit their positions to raise money for the upcoming initial public offering (IPO) of gas transmission company Transgaz, brokers said.
"It was another day of sharp losses of more than two percent. The trading volumes were big as investors are selling to make money for the Transgaz IPO. Actually they have been doing that for a while now," one broker told SeeNews.
“The other reasons for the fall are negative developments on international markets as well as the unstable economic situation in Romania,” the broker said.
Romania's state-owned Transgaz will hold an IPO of 10% of its shares between November 26 and December 7.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange's (BVB) blue-chip BET index dropped 2.09% to 8,662.19 points. The composite BET-C index lost two percent to 5,994.75 and the ROTX index of Romania's nine most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, slipped 1.68% to 19,340.29.
The BET-FI, which tracks the SIF regional investment funds, was the biggest loser, dropping 3.31% to 66,739.76.Share turnover on the BVB fell to 71.5 million lei ($30.1 million/20.3 million euro) from 101.3 million on Tuesday. BVB's overall volume rose slightly to 77.7 million shares. The five SIFs dominated trading, accounting for 66% of the BVB's total turnover.
SIF 2 Moldova was the most heavily traded stock in regular trading, losing 4.58% to 2.92 lei in a turnover of 15.1 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia ended down 3.39% at 3.71 lei in the second highest turnover of 15 million lei. SIF 4 Muntenia closed down 1.95% at 2.01 lei in the third largest turnover of 7.3 million lei. “Obviously some big investment funds are exiting the SIFs,” the broker added.
Blue-chip bank Banca Transilvania lost 1.8% to 0.82 lei in 3.6 million lei of turnover and rival BRD ended 2.55% lower at 22.9 lei in turnover of 2.1 million lei. Blue chip Transelectrica dropped 6.1% to 30.8 lei in 1.8 million lei of turnover.
Oil and gas group Petrom was the most traded blue chip and the only one to gain ground, adding 0.62% to 0.488 lei in a turnover of 6.5 million lei.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, lost 1.39% to 4,269.56. Turnover on the RASDAQ market rose to 11.5 million lei on Wednesday from 8.7 million on Tuesday. Metal waste recycling company Remat Maramures was the most traded stock on the RASDAQ, closing one percent higher at 30.3 lei in turnover of 3.2 million lei.
(1 euro = 3.5211 Romanian lei)