Last month, the BEL20 Index lost 1.22%. However, since its lowest level on 22 March 2001, the index rose by 12%. The Brussels All Shares Price and Return Index went down by 1.5% each. The Small Caps Index showed a slight increase of 0.68%. The economic sector indices Resources and Utilities increased by respectively 0.40% and 0.87%. The sector Information Technology plunged by 20.22%.
On 31 August 2001, the total market capitalisation of the Belgian listed companies amounted to 172,493.66 million EUR. 46.50% of this total has been traded by the five biggest market capitalisations : 22.58 billion EUR (Fortis), 20.18 billion EUR (Dexia), 13.55 billion EUR (Electrabel), 12.16 billion EUR (KBC) and 11.74 billion EUR (Interbrew).
During the month of August, a total turnover of 2,934.86 million EUR was reached. The average daily turnover amounted to 127.60 million EUR. Fortis B was the most traded share with a total monthly volume of 744.10 million EUR, followed by Dexia (257.47 million EUR), Delhaize (240.17 milllion EUR), UCB(236.80 milllion EUR) and Electrabel (219.74 milllion EUR).
The Derivatives Market
In terms of turnover, August was a very good month with a 93% volume rise compared to last month's volume. Especially the index products animated the markets with a rise of 182.4% for the "IPU" and 14.2% for the options and futures on the BEL20® index. For the whole derivatives market, a total of 407,340 contracts were traded during this month. Since the beginning of the year the cumulated volume amounts to 3,682,426 contracts. For the options on shares : KBC, Solvay,Umicore (ex-Union Minière), Ubizen and Electrabel performed well with respective increases in the number of contracts exchanged of 138.5%, 81%, 68.4%, 50% and 8%.
At the end of August, the open interest amounted to 1,239,923.
