Bosnian Share Indices Keep Echoing World Gloom, Turnovers Slightly Rise

”Global events keep pushing our market down, which has been no news over the last few weeks. In Sarajevo, blue chips were most attractive on the demand side, especially BH Telecom and Bosnalijek,” Aida Nusinovic of Sarajevo-based brokerage Hypo Vrijednosnice told SeeNews.

Yet the SASX-10 index, tracking the 10 blue chips on the Sarajevo Stock Exchange (SASE), Bosnia’s bigger bourse, lost 10.38% to 1,334.33 points.

”Turnover was much better than last week’s but still, most of it was in UniCredit Bank d.d. Mostar’s corporate bond subscriptions,” Nusinovic said.

Weekly turnover skyrocketed to 54.42 million marka ($35.29 million/27.82 million euro) from 1.96 million marka last week, the bourse said in its weekly trading report. UniCredit Bank bond subscription was worth 40 million marka.

“Nevertheless, volumes were comparatively high, given levels in Banja Luka,” the broker added, referring to the town where Bosnia’s smaller bourse is located.

Commercial bank IKB Zenica posted the highest weekly turnover of 558,600 marka on the SASE. Its shares traded at an average weighted price of 117.21 marka on Friday, down from 135.00 marka a week ago.

Austrian-owned bank ABS Banka was the best performer in the SASX-10 and the only stock in the index not to lose ground. It was unchanged from last Friday at an average weighted price of 334.83 marka. The weakest performer in the index was drug firm Bosnialijek, which lost 16.02% from last Friday to an average of 15.94 marka.

Nusinovic said there had been little or no interest in investment funds' stocks in Sarajevo this week. SASE’s index tracking investment funds, the BIFX, fell 2.26% from last Friday to 2,435.60 points.

Turnover on the Banja Luka Stock Exchange (BLSE), rose slightly to 1.44 million marka this week from 1.36 million marka last week although there were only four trading days due to an official holiday on Friday. The main indices kept sliding.

The BLSE benchmark BIRS index fell 3.68% from last Friday to 1,115.21 points. The BLSE investment fund index FIRS also was down, falling by a weekly 8.62% to 2,014.07 points.

Nova Banka was the most traded stock on the BLSE's official market with a turnover of 222,455 marka and an average weighted price of 2,455.00 marka on Friday, unchanged from a week ago.

Balkan Investment Fond had the highest turnover of 455,175 marka among investment funds this week, with an average weighted price of 4.50 marka on Friday, unchanged from a week earlier.

Jahorina Koin was the biggest gainer among investment funds, adding a weekly 9.23% to an average weighted price of 2.84 marka per share on Friday.

(1 euro=1.95583 Bosnian marka)