After closing mixed on Thursday, the blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, shed 0.72% to 2,915.13 and the BET-FI index, which tracks Romania's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, fell 1.7% to 14,493.29 points.
The composite BET-C index closed down 0.68% to 2,119.50. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, ended 0.68% lower at 6,613.41.
”The international context figured heavily in today's fall, as unemployment data in the U.S. pointed to levels not seen since 1974. The liquidity on our market was again low as investors get more and more worried about the crisis already affecting the real economy,” one broker told SeeNews.
BVB's turnover surged to 76.4 million lei ($25.3 million/19.8 million euro) from 9.6 million lei on Thursday, as Greek bakery group Loulis Mills sold its 29.5% stake in Romanian bakery Titan to Austria's LLI Euromills for 64.5 million lei. The number of shares traded on Friday increased to 131 million from 23.7 million on Thursday.
Some 7.3 million lei worth of World Bank and Banca Carpatica bonds traded on Friday. “Investors are becoming more defensive and are starting to trade in these instruments. I think demand is coming from abroad, as the local investors left in the market are speculators and prefer trading in shares instead,” the broker added.
Blue-chip bank BRD ended unchanged at 8.0 lei in the day’s highest turnover of 1.6 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia ended 1.44% down at 0.685 lei in the day’s second largest turnover of 605,000 lei. Titan dropped 4.17% to 0.46 lei in the day’s third largest turnover of 421,200 lei.
Austria’s Erste bank, the first foreign stock traded on the BVB, depreciated by 1.16% to 59.8 lei in deals worth 361,300 lei.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom shed 1.1% to 0.179 lei in deals worth 195,000 lei. Blue-chip gas transmission company Transgaz lost 1.79% to 126.0 lei in 209,000 lei turnover. Blue-chip power grid operator Transelectrica fell by 1.65% to 11.9 lei in deals worth 165,000 lei.
SIF 3 Transilvania was the only SIF to gain ground, adding 0.32% to 0.318 lei on 90,500 lei turnover.
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid blue-chip companies, including the SIFs, lost 1.01% to 289.54 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, fell 1.59% to 351.83.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, shed 1.08% to 2,193.97. Turnover on RASDAQ increased to 1.5 million lei from 637,000 lei on Thursday.
(1 euro = 3.8499 Romanian lei)
