BUCHAREST (Romania), November 6 (SeeNews) – Romanian share indices headed down on Friday amid higher volumes after U.S. unemployment figures came in higher than expected, brokers said.
The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, fell 0.61% to 4,474.64 points. The BET-FI, which tracks the country's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, was the worst-performing index, dropping 4.9% to 20,032.27 points.
The composite BET-C index shed 0.65% to 2,608.76. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, slipped 0.52% to 9,443.9.
“The market closed lower mostly because the U.S. unemployment data was higher than expected and investors had been anticipating these figures all week. The SIFs were hit by the [Romanian] political context today as the draft law for the lifting of their ownership ceiling from 1.0% to 5.0% is not likely to be voted on soon,” one broker told SeeNews.
The share price of the SIFs is very sensitive to any news related to the raising or scrapping of the shareholding cap designed to safeguard the funds from any single investor gaining control.
BVB's turnover more than doubled to 28.9 million lei ($10 million/6.7 million euro) from 13.6 million lei on Thursday. The number of traded shares increased to 40.9 million from 26.8 million on Thursday.
SIF 5 Oltenia sank 4.59% to 1.04 lei in the day's largest turnover of 6.7 million lei. Blue-chip lender Banca Transilvania added 0.53% to 1.88 lei on deals worth a total of 3.7 million lei, Friday’s second largest turnover. SIF 2 Moldova closed 4.19% lower at 0.915 lei on the regular market in the session’s third largest turnover of 3.0 million lei.
The other blue-chip lender, BRD, was down 0.79% to 12.6 lei in 1.8 million lei turnover, and Austria’s Erste Bank shed 0.16% to 124.6 lei in turnover of 1.3 lei.
SIF 3 Transilvania tumbled 4.92% to 0.58 lei in deals worth 2.4 million lei. SIF 1 Banat Crisana declined 5.39% to 0.965 lei in 1.2 million lei turnover.
Blue-chip oil and gas group OMV Petrom slid 1.99% to 0.246 lei in deals worth a total of 1.4 million lei. Fertiliser maker Azomures fell 3.73% to 0.31 lei in deals worth 483,000 lei.
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, lost 1.7% to 423.59 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, was down 0.81% to 578.63 points.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, edged down 0.05% to 2,260.24. Turnover on the RASDAQ rose to 1.0 million lei from 380,000 lei on Thursday.
(1 euro = 4.3049 Romanian lei)