BUX Index Rose in Expanding Turnover This Week

The stock index of the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE) rose this week, closing at 43,469.84 points on Friday, 293.20 points, 0.68% higher than a week ago. Turnover was HUF 71.2 billion, up from HUF 55.71 billion the previous week, with the leading shares, with the exception of Richter, weakening, the state news agency MTI reported this Sunday morning.

In its weekly summary sent to MTI, Equilor Investment Ltd. pointed out that the week started on a negative note, however, on Wednesday, the Hungarian stock market index started to rise, but still failed to exceed the 44,000-point level by the end of the week.

On Monday and Tuesday, investors' sentiment was negatively affected by the expected acceleration of the US Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, the Russian-Ukrainian war and the spread of the coronavirus epidemic in China. On the first day of the week, the BUX closed down 2.08%, while the following day it fell 1.02%.

On Wednesday, despite a slightly negative international sentiment at the opening, the Hungarian market managed to rise by the end of the day. The rise was led by OTP and Richter, with OTP shares up 1.68% and Richter shares up 1.99%.

On Thursday, the BUX rose sharply, outperforming European and overseas indices. Equilor analysts said the performance could have been driven by the Hungarian government's announcement that it would seek an agreement with the European Union. The BUX closed up 1,433.15 points, 3.40%, at 43,549.19 points on Thursday.

Trading started well on Friday morning, but investor sentiment later deteriorated, with OTP shares coming under selling pressure, presumably due to uncertainty over the Russia-Ukraine war, with no market-changing news. The Budapest Stock Exchange's share index, the BUX, closed the last day of the week down 0.18%.

Richter was the strongest performer this week, up 275 points or 4.00% on a turnover of HUF 9.3 billion, ending the week at HUF 7,150 on Friday.

The BUMIX index of small and medium-sized shares closed the week at 4,048.63 points, down 42.87 points or 1.05% on the previous week.