Few investors, however, dared buy stocks in Bucharest in February 2009, considering the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank six months prior had driven the global financial system to the brink, throwing it into its worst crisis in eighty years.
Investors at the time sold their shares at the lowest prices possible, companies, especially small ones, were dropping like flies and most analysts were quick to talk about the doom of the financial markets. Under the circumstances, investors would sell stocks of SIFs, banks, construction companies badly hit by the crisis along with OMV Petrom and Transelectrica, issuers with sound financial results, which did not justify such decline. Those who bought at the time were able to make quite a profit shortly, considering the BET index increased four-fold between February 2009 and April 2010. Investors later rounded off their profits with dividends.
Even though the Bucharest Stock Exchange multiplied the profits four-fold in the past two years without taking dividends into account, it still has 30% to recover to return to the all-time high of July 2007. An analyst says it will take two years to get there.
“In the absence of any major economic and political events to make a negative impact on the international and domestic stock markets, such an increase can be achieved in about two years under normal market circumstances,” says Adrian Cojocar, deputy general manager of SAI Carpatica Asset Management.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)