November 2 (SeeNews) - Romanian stock indices closed mostly down on Friday in line with depressed international markets, brokers said.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange's (BVB) blue-chip BET index lost 0.41% to 9,921.68 points and the composite BET-C index dropped 0.63% to 6,872.21 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 0.14% lower at 21,846.40 points.
The BET-FI, which tracks the country's regionally-defined investment funds, the SIFs, was the only index to gain ground, edging up 0.07% to 78,724.01 points.
“The market was heading down most of the time. The SIFs only managed to close slightly up at the end of the trading session. Sellers continue to dominate the trading and the losses on the international markets reflected on ours as well,” one broker told SeeNews.
Blue-chip power grid operator Transelectrica was the most traded stock in regular trading on the BVB on Friday, gaining 0.25% to 39.5 lei in turnover of eight million lei.
SIF 2 Moldova closed 0.56% lower at 3.55 lei in the second highest turnover of 2.9 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia gained 0.94% to 4.3 lei in the day's third largest turnover of 2.7 million lei.
The second Romanian blue-chip bank, BRD, shed 0.38% to 26.1 lei in 1.8 million lei turnover. Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom gained 0.94% to 0.535 lei in 1.25 million lei turnover.
The other blue-chip oil stock Rompetrol Rafinare slumped 4.27% to 0.112 lei in 2.5 million lei turnover due to weak nine-month results, the broker said. The refinery reported on Thursday a net loss of $12.0 million (8.3 million euro) for the first nine months of 2007, double that of the same period in 2006, due to foreign exchange losses.
BVB's overall volume was 35 million shares, double the 17 million exchanged on Thursday. Stock turnover rose to 30.5 million lei ($13.2 million/9.1 million euro) from 25.7 million lei the previous day.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, went 0.72% down to 4,852.31.
Turnover on the RASDAQ market fell to 9.8 million lei from the 33 million lei on Thursday, when SIF 5 Oltenia sold its 16.5% stake in railway and tramway locomotives maker SMR in a single trade worth total 18.7 million lei.
On the RASDAQ on Friday there was one block deal with 4.7 million shares of hotel operator Palace Sinaia at a price of 0.59 lei, totaling 2.8 million lei. In regular trading Palace Sinaia closed 1.69% lower at 0.58 lei.
(1 euro = 3.3416 Romanian lei)