Falling to Zero

However, it might be said that the dealers exhibited maximal activity at the beginning of the week. For instance, last Monday, concluded agreements exceeded Hr 2 million. In the following days, the wait-and-see attitude prevailed, and transactions were carried out with great caution and very seldom (the daily volumes ranged from Hr 23,000 to Hr 160,000).

The daily OTCSE index without any fluctuations was smoothly sliding down. Its maximum value for the last week, was again 22.75 points on Monday, and the minimum was 21.62 points on Friday. The index value dropped by 4.96%.

We would like to remind you that October 1, 1997 (that is one year ago) the OTCSE Association calculated its daily and weekly indices with a base value of 100 points. The stagnation of the market which has lasted for over one year affected the daily index, reducing it 4.61 times. Without plunging into analytical studies, it can be said that the price for the most liquid stock (which is used as a basis for calculating the index) has dropped at least 4.6 times. As far as second and third echelon stock is concerned, the fall in its quoted price has varied by 10 to more times.

The range of positions for which agreements were concluded could be compared to the previous week of 15. Two of those were related to bonds, one to NDCE, and the rest concerned corporate securities. Government bonds had maturity periods of one week (228% annual interest rate) and two weeks (158% annual interest rate). Since the Ministry of Finance has been completely fulfilling its obligations in hryvnia terms thus far, the risk-profit ratio has up to now been at an acceptable level. However, you never know the next anti-crisis step our government is going to take.

Incidentally, government bonds accounted for 80.76% of transactions, which is virtually a total week's turnover of the system. Corporate securities. Most significant transactions were carried out with the old OCSTS favorites, Donbasenerho (5.75%), Khartsyzk Pipe Mill (2.75%), Slavutych Brewery (2.41%), Ukrnafta (1.94%), and Dniproenerho (1.74%). The purchase price for the Khartsyzk Pipe Mill stock fell by 33%, Donbasenerho, by 7.27%, Ukrnafta, by 0.23%, and for Dniproenerho, by 15.3%.