Bucharest Stock Exchange Close to Expiation

The Rompetrol president Dinu Patriciu had said on March 19 he did not want to invest in a portfolio traded on the Bucharest Stock Exchange as the market was overvalued.

The Rompetrol president Dinu Patriciu had said on March 19 he did not want to invest in a portfolio traded on the Bucharest Stock Exchange as the market was overvalued. In fact, he said the BSE real value stood at 50% of the traded one.
Indeed, the BET index value on March 19 was 7,294; it stays now at 5,735.

At the time of Patriciu's public statement the brokers' association took a stand against it, and asked for the regulatory bodies and “other state authorities” to assess how “false signals able to influence capital market investors” may be avoided in the future.

Patriciu stopped from giving any kind of signals since, but the truth of the matter is that BET is today at one third of its value on 24 July 2007, which stayed at 10,814.

One year ahead of Patriciu, was the BAC Investment Bank manager partner Matei Paun who said in an interview to the Financial Weekly sSaptamana Financiaraţ that as long as on BSE “there are only five to eight stocks one could invest in, the capital market will stay expensive and volatile.” He went on to explain that one could loose up to 3-% to 40% in the value of traded stocks, as Petrom or BRD.

In the mean time, officials in the companies traded with some success on BSE arrived at similar conclusions.
BRD Societe Generale president Patrick Gelin told one month ago to the Financial Paper sZiarul Financiarţ that the BSE was with one foot in the grave.

“No financial market may be built in this manner,” Gelin said. “It was in fact fueled up by non-residents, who pulled out their money, causing everybody else to do the same. A stock exchange may live only with support from professional local investors in the capital market, like the insurance companies, pension funds; it cannot found its business on foreign investors or local retail investors. “And one should have at least 10 different viable stocks to really make a market stand on its own.” Gelin said.

The retail market could have been oriented towards the bonds' issues, but authorities waited far too long to make that kind of trade possible, and now, when buying state bonds is an option, there are no buyers, as foreign capital investors are already gone, Gelin added.

Finally, if politics would not have interfered with the economy and its markets, the Romanian stocks might have stood a chance to be traded on the Polish stock exchange by now. This did not happen, however.

One can only wonder what would be the future evolution of the stock market in the months to come.