November 26 (SeeNews) - The Romanian stock market gained further ground on Monday as the SIF regional investment funds led the way, brokers said.
"Today’s rises confirmed the end of the downward trend, I think. SIFs led the way because they always give the start of a new trend, plus their prices are very attractive right now," one broker told SeeNews. “After days of panic and sharp falls, there’s usually a market recovery.”
The broker expects modest rises in the next couple of weeks, followed by stabilization of the quotations and a period of accumulation. “We cannot witness galloping rises without a period of accumulation,” the broker added.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange's (BVB) blue-chip BET index rose 1.35% to 8,851.45 points. The composite BET-C index gained 1.87% to 6,189.56 and the ROTX index of Romania's nine most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, advanced 1.09% to 19,705.20. The BET-FI, which tracks the SIF regional investment funds, was the biggest gainer, rising 3.52% to 69,213.40.
“Usually when the SIFs’ prices fall to 75% of the funds’ book value, they bounce back. This rule has been confirmed today. I think those that invest in SIFs now do it out of conviction and not because of speculation,” the broker said.
Share turnover on the BVB fell to 50.5 million lei ($21 million/14 million euro) from 56 million on Friday. BVB's overall volume decreased to 27 million shares from 41 million. The five SIFs accounted for more than 60% of the BVB's total turnover.
SIF 5 Oltenia was the most heavily traded stock in regular trading, adding 3.24% to 3.82 lei in a turnover of 10.4 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova jumped 5.17% to 3.05 lei in the second highest turnover of 7.7 million lei. SIF 1 Banat Crisana closed up 2.68% at 3.06 lei in the third largest turnover of 5.3 million lei.
BRD Bank was the most traded blue chip, adding 3.48% to 23.80 lei in 5.2 million lei of turnover. The other blue-chip bank, Banca Transilvania, advanced 1.23% to 0.825 lei in 3.3 million lei turnover. Blue-chip brokerage SSIF Broker jumped 8.41% to 2.45 lei, generating 1.7 million lei in turnover. “After SSIF Broker lost some 15% just last week, it was expected to recover that sharply,” the broker said.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom shed 1.2% to 0.494 lei in a turnover of 979,000 lei. Rompetrol Well Services rocketed by 7.53% to 1.57 lei in 3.8 million lei turnover. “As for Rompetrol Well Services, the company had some very good nine-month results, but as the market was heading down, they couldn’t reflect in the price, so it is happening now,” he added.
Romania's state-owned gas transmission company Transgaz on Monday launched an IPO of 10% of its shares which will close on December 7. The broker said no investor subscribed for Transgaz on the first day of the launch. “It’s been like that with all IPOs so far. The subscription takes place really in the last two days and most heavily in the last half an hour because investors prefer to do something else with their money in the meantime,” he added.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, gained 2.41% to 4,374.77. Turnover on the RASDAQ market doubled to 7.6 million lei on Monday. Gas transport firm Armax was the most traded stock on the RASDAQ, closing 5.88% higher at 0.27 lei in turnover of 1.1 million lei.
(1 euro = 3.6027 Romanian lei)