The BET-FI index, which tracks Romania’s five regionally-defined investment funds, the SIFs, led the falls, tumbling by 9.2% to 17,544.46 points. The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, lost 5.38% to 3,619.70.
The composite BET-C index slumped 6.17% to 2,716.61. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, went 6.06% down to 8,591.31.
Global markets rose strongly on Monday and Tuesday, welcoming the pledge of support from governments worldwide for the financial institutions in a bid to ward off a global slowdown.
"The [Romanian] market gained ground very strongly in the past two days, mostly the SIFs, and now speculators thought it’s the right moment to sell and mark profits. Plus, the international markets were in a negative mood as well,” one broker told SeeNews.
BVB’s turnover nearly halved to 28.3 million lei ($10.2 million/7.5 million euro) from 49 million lei on Tuesday. The number of shares traded on Wednesday decreased to 48 million from 136.4 million.
Blue-chip bank BRD dropped by 5.64% to 9.2 lei in the day’s highest turnover of 5.7 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia lost 10.66% to 0.88 lei in the day's second largest turnover of 5.1 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova tumbled by 11.05% to 0.765 lei in the day's third highest turnover of 3.4 million lei.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom declined by 11.11% to 0.24 lei on deals worth 2.3 million euro, while blue-chip power grid operator Transelectrica fell 5.7% to 14.9 lei on 1.5 million lei turnover.
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid blue-chip companies, including the SIFs, ended 6.41% lower at 354.83 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, dropped by 6.96% to 491.37.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, fell 2.58% to 2,603.53. Turnover on RASDAQ fell to 1.3 million lei from 5.8 million lei on Tuesday.
Global stocks, including those in southeastern Europe, posted significant losses last week amid concerns for a spread of the global financial crisis.
(1 euro = 3.7762 Romanian lei)
