Belgrade Stock Market Ends Week on Negative Note, Mirrors Global Rout

“We simply follow the global trend,” a local broker told SeeNews. “Although compared to other indices in the region, our fall was milder. In Croatia, though the session there is not closed yet, they are some 10% down, and in Slovenia [the decline is] over six percent.”

The blue-chip BELEX15 index closed down 2.45% at 725.63 points on Friday after rising 1.83% a day earlier. It was down by 25.63% on the week.

The composite BELEXline index dropped 2.07% to 1,534.74 on Friday with a weekly loss of 18.99%. The joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna collapsed 7.85% to 381.53.

Total turnover on the BELEX fell to 179 million dinars ($3.1 million/2.2 million euro) from 233 million dinars on Thursday. The total weekly turnover was 57.36% higher compared to last week.

“There was a pick-up in demand and we had good volumes on AIK Banka, Energoprojekt and not bad on Sojaprotein,” the broker said. “They did fall but the trading was good." AIK Banka and Energoprojekt posted a combined turnover of a million euro.

Blue-chip heavyweight AIK Banka plummeted 11.84% to 2,659 dinars in 50.4 million dinars of turnover, the highest for the day. Blue-chip engineering holding company Energoprojekt fell 5.26% to 667 dinars in 24.7 million dinars of turnover, while blue-chip soybean producer Sojaprotein Becej shed 6.63% to 859 dinars in 7.1 million dinars of turnover.

“As for the likely end to the [market] decline, it doesn’t depend on what happens here, in our country. This is a global crisis. All depends on the interbank market. Until their problems are solved, we cannot expect investor confidence to be restored,” the broker said.

(1 euro = 79.5845 dinars)