BUX further up
The Budapest Stock Exchangeʼs main BUX index finished up 0.99% at 22,100.06 Monday after rising 1.56% Thursday, the last trading day before a national holiday on Friday. It is up 32.86% from year-end, after losing 10.40% last year. Over last week, the it raked up 0.14% after sliding 0.41% in the preceding week.
While Western markets mostly slid on mixed company results and ahead of the US Fedʼs policy meeting ending on Wednesday, the Budapest bourse rose for a second day to catch up with huge rises in euro zone bourses on Friday.
OTP Bank still sailed with the tailwind of encouragement given by the European Central Bank (ECB) last Thursday. The ECB pledged to re-examine the degree of monetary policy accommodation at its next policy meeting on December 3, in case more measures were needed. The market is widely expecting some enhancement of the quantitative-easing-like asset purchase programme the ECB launched in the spring.
Oil company MOLʼs gains only thinned in last hour profit taking following healthy rises throughout the day on a conclusion of the European Commission that the previous Hungarian government did not give the company an unfair market advantage when it exempted it from a rise of mining fees in 2008 based on a 2005 fee-fixing agreement with it. This followed a verdict of the EU Court of Justice in June which annulled an earlier European Commission decision in 2010 that said the governmentʼs measure constituted illegal state aid.
Thus, MOL escapes the refund of more than €100 mln to the government.
Meanwhile, general business confidence in Hungary fell to 5.8 points in October from 7.5 in the previous month, GKI-Ersteʼs fresh survey showed.
The combined gauge of consumer and business confidence rose to minus 0.8 points from minus 1.8 on consumer confidence which still struggled in negative territory, climbing to minus 19.6 points from minus 28.3.
OTP won 1.63% to HUF 5,740 on turnover of HUF 2.89 bln from a preliminary HUF 6,63 bln session total, about a quarter short of the daily average this year.
MOL gained 0.19% to HUF 13,225 on turnover of HUF 1.19 bln.
Magyar Telekom ended flat at HUF 382 on turnover of HUF 733 mln.
Richter advanced 1.45% to HUF 4,770 on turnover of HUF 1.76 bln.
The bourseʼs mid-cap BUMIX went out 0.21% higher at 1,606.12.
Elsewhere in the region, WIG 20 in Warsaw was down 0.24%, while Pragueʼs PX shed 0.38%.
Western Europeʼs major indices were all down ahead of their close on Monday, FTSE100 in London 0.45%, DAX30 in Frankfurt 0.07%, and CAC40 in Paris 0.72%.
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