Romania is 17th in a ranking of 77 international stock exchanges put together by UK investment firm Bespoke Investment Group. The average rise of the 77 bourses was 4% this year. While last year the Romanian stock exchange had moved out of the spotlight of worldwide rises, at the beginning of 2013 the Bucharest stock market returned to investor attention, featuring among the top risers this year.
The performance of the Bucharest bourse this year has been better than those of the majority of mature stock exchanges.
The local stock exchange was outranked mainly by emerging and exotic markets, very little known to investors.
The highest riser this year was the Nigerian stock exchange, with a 20% advance, as the economy of this country recorded some of the world’s highest growth rates in the past two years, of between 6% and 8% based on the country’s significant oil reserves and on the international rise in the oil price.
Iceland, Ukraine and Greece, some of the countries most hurt by the worldwide financial crisis, saw significant inflows from investors at the beginning of the year, which drove the main indexes of these stock exchanges up by 10% to 14.4%.
While in the first part of last year investors adopted a more cautious attitude, focusing in particular on mature markets, such as Germany, Denmark, the US and Japan, these markets have no longer been the focus of attention this year.
The Polish stock exchange has also lost its glow, recording one of the steepest corrections since the beginning of the year – 5.1%, while the Turkish stock exchange was flat after last year it had been the world’s top riser.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)