The Stock Exchange witnessed its most dramatic decline of the last ten months yesterday, when the BET index lost 4.5% and BET-C, which gauges the performance of all the shares on the market, dropped 4.77%.
The decline came at a time when all the markets in the region registered declines of 2% to 4% when the Bucharest Stock Exchange trading closed, which shows that a number of investment funds that invested on these markets have been selling.
The decline is even more dramatic considering it comes after a very bad start to the year on the BSE, marked by several days of corrections in a row. After yesterday's decline, the BET and BET-C indices were down 16.5% compared with the end of last year, while the SIF index, BET-FI lost almost 19%.
Brokers find it increasingly more difficult to explain why the new corrections on the Stock Exchange, and recommendations are out of the question these days.
"There's nothing we can do. We're sitting and waiting for the internatinoal crisis to pass. There are no calculations you can make at present, because these declines are not up to us. Until the Americans bounce back and investors regain confidence in the capital market there's no hope of a rebound," says Adrian Manaila, manager of brokerage firm Eldainvest based in Galati.
Yesterday's correction on the Stock Exchange, which came with a higher traded volume than registered lately, is due to sales by foreign investors, some brokers believe, given that the most affected were highly liquid shares such as SIFs, banks and petroleum companies, in which foreign funds keep their investments. SIFs lost an average of over 5%, while BRD dropped 5.24%. Petrom (SNP) and Banca Transilvania (TLV) shed 3.8% and 3.6%, respectively.
Other brokers are blaming local investors, and especially speculators, who have been increasingly more active and att
