November 20 (SeeNews) - The Romanian stock market fell further on Tuesday amid higher volumes, brokers said.
"Today the negative trend continued but volumes in the second half of the trading session, especially on SIFs [regional investment funds], showed that the investors became more and more confident that the negative trend could be close to an end," one broker told SeeNews.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange's (BVB) blue-chip BET index dropped 2.01% to 8,846.68 points. The composite BET-C index lost 3.05% to 6,116.80 and the BET-FI, which tracks the SIFs, fell 2.54% to 69,020.98. The ROTX index of Romania's nine most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, slipped 1.84% to 19,669.93.
Share turnover on the BVB jumped to 101.3 million lei ($42.8 million/29 million euro) from 37 million on Monday. BVB's overall volume more than doubled to 76.4 million shares. The five SIFs dominated trading, accounting for some 60% of BVB's total turnover.
"SIFs closed on an optimistic note despite big falls. I think that prices on SIFs became more attractive for buying," the broker said. However, another broker said that high turnover of the SIFs shows that some big sellers, which exited their positions, appeared on the market on Tuesday.
SIF 5 Oltenia was the most heavily traded stock in regular trading, losing 2.78% to 3.84 lei in a turnover of 20.7 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova ended down 3.77% at 3.06 lei in the second highest turnover of 19.8 million lei. SIF 1 Banat Crisana closed down 1.90% at 3.10 lei in the day's third largest turnover of 9.2 million lei.
Blue-chip bank Banca Transilvania lost 1.18% to 0.835 lei in 7.4 million lei of turnover and rival BRD ended down 0.84% at 23.50 lei in turnover of 5.9 million lei.
Oil and gas group Petrom lost 2.22% to 0.485 lei in a turnover of 3.6 million lei. Blue-chip petrochemical producer Oltchim dropped 13.93% to 1.05 lei in a turnover of 652,909 lei.
"It's possible that Oltchim fell on profit taking as investors stockpile money for subscription to the company's capital hike," one broker said. Majority state-owned Oltchim plans to raise its capital by 954.8 million lei to 987.1 million lei. Oltchim will issue some 9.5 billion new shares at a price equal to their face value of 0.10 lei per share.
New shares valued at 508.5 million lei will be offered to the Romanian state, which holds a 53.5% stake in Oltchim, in return for cancelling Oltchim's debts. The remaining shares, valued at 446.3 million lei, will be offered to Oltchim's minority shareholders in proportion to their holdings.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, lost 1.93% to 4,329.82. Turnover on the RASDAQ market rose to 8.7 million lei on Tuesday from 5.7 million on Monday. Construction company Constructii Bihor was the most traded stock on the RASDAQ, closing unchanged at 81 lei in turnover of 1.7 million lei.
(1 euro=3.5016 Romanian lei)