Farmache sees $1m daily

The Stock Exchange management estimates the daily average value of transactions to range between 30-36 billion ROL for the remaining 250 days of 2003, Stere Farmache, general manager of the Stock Exchange told Ziarul Financiar.
The forecasts consider an 18-20% increase of the daily average transactions as compared to 2002 (one of the best years for the Stock Exchange), when they amounted to 28bn ROL.
However, the budget will be built around the current level of fees charged by the Bourse, that is 0.145% for purchases and 0.225% for sales on the Regular market. The trading fees account for about half of the budget. In 2002, the Bourse cut trading fees twice and Farmache says that cuts may be operated this year, as well.
“Trading fees will be cut only if the transaction value increase exceeds our expectations or if the budget logs a surplus,” Farmache stated.
Last year, transactions (including transfers operated as part of public offers) totalled 6,718 billion ROL ($215 million), namely a daily average of 27.8 billion ROL. The beginning of this year, although better than the year-ago period, is below last year’s average in terms of transaction values.
In the first two months, transactions totalled 1,081 billion ROL, that is 27.7 billion ROL daily, more than double the levels posted in the year-ago period.
According to brokers, the main factor behind the increased value of transactions  is last year’s price surge, when all three bourse indexes went up 100%. “The number of traded shares is dropping, though. A certain tendency to concentrate stakes has become obvious on the market. An increase in the daily value of transactions will only be possible by listing new companies and trading T-bills,” said Rares Nilas, head of BT Securities, the brokerage company of Banca Transilvania.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro