Though the financial press anticipates a consolidating tendency to manifest next week, our own expectations for these five days have nothing to do with price stabilization.

We expect to witness five very volatile trading sessions especially for the Financial Investment Companies, as the Parliament is expected to decide on the Budget and Finance Commission proposal to impose the one per cent detaining threshold to persons acting concerted.

As the Parliament decision is as difficult to anticipate as it is important to SIFs evolution (and, consequently, to stock market short-term evolution), we refrain from any attempt to prefigure the trend for the next five days.

However, on medium term we might revise the slightly descending trend previously expected for the period prior to European Commission report on May; this slight change was determined by the encouraging declarations of the European official Franco Frattini.

Last week

We’ve expected a consolidating tendency for a minor support area to manifest last week, and this expectation was actually confirmed, as the BET index put an end to its downward trend and reported only an insignificant loss of minus 1.18 per cent due to a red Friday session.

We have also looked out for some "treacherous rebounds, recommendable only to speculators", and the SIFs indeed offered substantial gains for those who were willing to take the risk.

However, the magnitude of SIFs advance and especially the relative constancy in maintaining the upward trend caught us by surprise, as the five Financial Investments Companies ended on Friday deep on positive ground with 5.81 per cent increase, despite a 0.64 per cent loss in the last day.

Details

Three of the five SIFs qualified last week for the TOP 5 Gainers. SIF1 had by far the strongest advance, as the company announced its intention to distribute shares to shareholders, instead of the usual dividend.

On Friday SIF3 also announced its intention to increase capital with free shares and convoked the General Shareholders Meeting. Romanian investors always welcome such announces, though based on our own analyses of recent capital increases, their enthusiasm is barely unjustified.

Besides SIFs, Impact (IMP) also posted unusual large gains this week after an impressive 7.21 per cent advance. The company recently announced its intention to sell an important building, but it also reported substantial insider selling trades.

Carbid Fox (CRB) qualifies for the TOP 5 Price Losers of last week. However, the company has already accustomed us with its high volatility and its managers’ lack of reaction against extreme price changes.

In its latest communiqué to Bucharest Stock Exchange CRB announced a two weeks delay for the General Shareholders Meeting.

Given that the share price of CRB is almost three times its net loss on share (2.64 times on Thursday, to be more precise), we can hardly wait for news that might explain this unusual evolution, especially now that Proprietatea Fund is one of its stakeholders.

Rompetrol Well Service (PTR) also "managed" to qualify in this unfortunate Top, probably due to uncertainties concerning Dinu Patriciu’s trial, which will continue today.

The Financial Investments Companies have also had the highest trading volume this week and were followed by BRD Groupe Societe Generale. The bank has had a very unusual evolution, as it closed far in negative ground, though at beginning investors seemed to be rather neutral to the Shareholders Meeting convocation for dividend (and not for capital increase).

Biofarm (BIO) also accounts for a large proportion of traded shares relative to Company’s total number of shares. There was a great amount of uncertainty lately concerning BIO, as the court recently decided to make void its privatization contract and ruled against Pharmaceutical Group LLC Nevada (former Shapiro Bancorp LLC according to Mediafax).

The situation became more clear lately, as the National Securities Commission already blocked the disputed shares, which now represents only one per cent of the capital.

This year, up until now

Since the beginning of the year the BET index had advanced 13.39 per cent, BET-C 14.12 per cent, while BET-FI is only slightly above its 23rd of December level (plus 1.08 per cent). The SIFs, Petrom and Banca Transilvania were most traded, while the largest stakes were exchanged with Sinteza and Carbid Fox.