Fed's plan pushes up bank shares on SE

Erste Bank shares reached an all time high yesterday on the Stock Exchange, posting a 5.4% surge, after the main indexes on the market rose slightly against the levels registered during the previous session.
Even after this advance, the closing price on the Stock Exchange for Erste shares was slightly lower than the level of 38.44 euros/share, traded on the Vienna Stock Exchange towards the end of yesterday’s session.
In fact, banking shares were among the shares with the highest appreciation yesterday, after BRD shares gained 3.5%, when shares of the parent bank, Soci?t? G?n?rale, climbed over 5% on the Paris stock exchange during yesterday’s session.
The increases registered by banking shares came amid speculations regarding the strategy of the American Central Bank (The Fed), which announced that it intended to raise 200 billion dollars by issuing T-bills, money that would be injected into the banking system.
The news prompted the US stock exchange to see the highest appreciation in 5 years, after the S&P 500 index gained 3.7%, and the American stock exchange’s reference index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, climbed 3.6%.
“On the Stock Exchange, the sentiment is better than it has been lately, but we are not sure whether there will be an upward trend,” says Octavian Molnar, general manager of brokerage company IFB Finwest.
The Stock Exchange started the session with moderate increases, while at the end of the session the BET index (which measures the ten most liquid shares on the Romanian Stock Exchange), closed with a 1.5% increase, and the SIFs (Financial Investment Companies) increased by an average 1%.
Among the SIFs, the most traded shares were those of SIF Oltenia, up 0.6%, with transactions worth 1.1 million euros (4.2 million RON).
Petrom’s shares were by far the most traded on the market, and gained 1.8% amid transactions worth 2.3 million euros (8.7 million RON).