In contrast with the general tendency, the BEL20Ò closed the month at 2,999.60 points or a rise of 1.04%. The Small and Mid Cap indices performed even better with increases of respectively 4.35% and 4.19%. This good performance is also reflected in the sector indices. Of the 30 existing sectors, 21 gained ground. Especially the sectors "Investment companies" (+13.80%), "Food & Drug retailers" (+5.77%) and "Packaging "(+5.45%) did well. The performance of the sector "Investment companies" was largely due to GBL and Electrafina registering rises of respectively 25.10% and 21.86%. The performance of the Concentra and LSG shares also was noticeable: they increased by respectively 25% and 22,79%.
On 28 February 2001, the market capitalisation amounted to 178.83 billion EUR of which 45.79% came from the five biggest market capitalisations, i.e. Fortis (23.14 billion EUR), Dexia (17.63 billion EUR), KBC (14.74 billion EUR), Electrabel (13.43 billion EUR) and Interbrew (12.95 billion EUR).
The monthly turnover for February equalled 3.88 billion EUR corresponding to 219,012,087 shares traded. The highest daily turnover was reached on 21 February when an amount of 271.04 million EUR was traded bringing the average daily turnover of February to 194 million EUR. The total turnover for warrants realised in February equalled 35.6 million EUR or 135,015,874 shares traded. Fortis was the most negotiated share (790.48 million EUR) followed by GBL (435.82 million EUR), Interbrew (336.34 million EUR), Dexia (300.76 million EUR) and Electrabel (231.65 million EUR).
Finally on 1 February, Real Software was replaced in the BEL20Ò Index by Interbrew, the Belgian brewer listed on EURONEXT BRUSSELS since 1 December of last year.
The Derivatives market
The rise of the volume on indexoptions since January continued in February and the volume in IPUs picked up again. The total volume for IPUs equalled 376,420 (+42.8%) contracts and the volume on indexoptions amounted to 101,143 (+14.3%) contracts, bringing the average daily volume of the whole derivatives market to 25,749 contracts, i.e. an increase of 27.2%.
Amongst the options on shares, the best performers were the options on Mobistar: +375%, Union Minière: +136.3%, Total Fina Elf: +133.3% and Delhaize: +42.5%.
