Money Keeps Flowing Onto The Budapest Bourse, But Still Not Gushing

The fact that the September turnover was behind the corresponding figures of the past three years may be partly attributed to market jitters and an extreme stock market volatility, which prompted several investors to withdraw to the sidelines. Nevertheless, September's HUF 970 billion (duplicated) was big enough to beat every month since March.

The 12-m cumulated turnover on the spot market eroded further, albeit not as drastically as in August. The record turnovers induced by the OMV-MOL battle last summer are beginning to drop out of the 12-m trailing figures, and so if turnover does not decline further in the coming months, the drop in the trailing data could also stop soon.

Regarding the ranking of brokerage houses, there have not been major changes in the Top10. Wood failed to hold on to its previous share of total turnover, while Cashline, Concorde and ING did and so finished before Wood. ING made the biggest leap forward, increasing its market share by 3.6 percentage points in a month, but one-off items could have played a role in that.

The Top10 brokerages accounted for 89.7% of total turnover, down a tenth of a percentage point from August, but still convincingly higher than early this year (around 85%). This could be interpreted as a concentration of the market, while the erosion of the smaller brokerage houses' market share may be attributed to the much more inactive small shareholders' non-participation - a consequence of market turbulences.

Looking at the year to date turnover figures, we do not see much of a chance of repeating last year's records in the spot section of the BSE, as it would require a spectacular improvement in market sentiment."

Source: Portfolio Online Financial Journal