Braun, ING Pensii: A resumption in GDP growth in 2010 would show on Stock Exchange

Stock Exchange investors are anticipating the progression of economic growth one year ahead, so if Romania's economy were to go up in 2010, the Stock Exchange would already start to see a rise," says Horia Braun, investments manager of the largest pension fund on the Romanian market, ING, with around 145 million euros in assets. "If investors anticipated that economic growth would resume next year at a level close to the potential GDP, this would already be apparent on the Stock Exchange. But it isn't. Things are very uncertain and Romania seems to be rather correlated with the progression of the international financial market," says Horia Braun, 36, who used to be head of the modelling service within the Monetary Policy and Macroeconomic Modelling Department of the NBR (National Bank of Romania), in an interview given to ZF. Investment managers generally follow the progression of all economic indicators, inflation, industrial production, and constructions industry. "I cannot make a top 3. We follow all indicators in order to gather as much information as possible when building our strategy. However, we take the officials' statements with a grain of salt. For instance, last autumn, the state was the only one to believe the 2009 economic growth would amount to 4%," Braun says.