What's next for the Bucharest Stock Exchange?

March 2012 - From the Print Edition

This week the Romanian markets entered into a small correction zone with very low variations on the main indices and low volume.
Factors contributing to this were the unknown end of the private sector involvement in the Greece debt restructure and the release in the last trading day of the week, of the Employment Report in US for the month of February. Both came out with positive outcome, Greece deal was passed with participation of over 80% of private sector creditors that agreed to exchange their bonds with new ones and over two hundred thousand jobs were created in USA in the last month.
The main indexes of Bucharest Stock Exchange finished the week with small corrections than the previous week:

• BET at 5.304 points -1,0%
• BET-FI at 25.162 points -3,2%

Next week the world markets attention will be focused on USA, on Tuesday evening, for the outcome of Federal Open Market Committee meeting and their monetary decision.
In the statement that is released after the meeting among other topics, it is provided a review of the world biggest economy, an inflation projection and risks weighing over this projections. In their latest statements they′ve outlined significant risks that come from Europe sovereign debt problems and is very interesting to see if after an agreement with private sector involvement in Greece debt had taken place and after the yields on Spain and Italy eased to very comfortable levels, they still think is worth mentioned "significant risk"
After the FOMC meeting, the market participants will focus on the latest inflation figures in the USA released on Thursday (Producer Price Index) and Friday (Consumer Price Index), expectations being for a small build up of price pressure, but nothing worrying that needs Federal Reserve to act on the interest rates.
Also Friday will be a quarterly expiration day (quadruple witching) a day when all the contracts of stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures expire and traders will want to adjust their portfolio accordingly to their needs, adding extra volume and volatility into the markets.
Quadruple witching occurs on the third Friday of March, June, September and December.
In Romania no major economic data is scheduled next week so the Bucharest Stock Exchange will correlate with the international markets in very probably moving higher and confirming the bull market that is unfolding.

This info is provided by Vasile Szakacs, Head analyst and founder of www.consultantabursa.ro