SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 5 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian stocks lost ground on Monday in a correction after the recent steep rise, brokers said.
The SOFIX index tracking the 17 most liquid shares on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) fell 2.41% to 1,845.51 points, and the broad BG 40 index tumbled 4.6% to 560.17 points.
“This correction was long expected,” Krasimir Atanasov, portfolio manager at Elana Fund Management, told SeeNews.
Some brokers and market analysts have said certain share prices have reached unreasonably high levels. BSE’s indices have posted a series of record highs since the beginning of the year, when a large inflow of foreign funds following the country’s EU accession boosted growth.
“First signals came from various sources like, for example, the market’s reaction to the [nine-month] corporate financial results like those of Central Cooperative Bank or First Investment Bank. Their shares hardly moved (…) The market is somewhat tired,” Atanasov said.
Both banks posted significant rises in their nine-month profits.
Atanasov added it was hard to tell how long the correction would last.
He said the overall downward trend affected all shares with paint and varnish maker Orgachim losing more than the average on Monday. The stock shed 7.3% to 714 levs in a volume of some 570 shares.
On Monday 130 stocks lost ground, 31 rose and 17 closed unchanged.
BSE's turnover fell to 11.6 million levs ($8.6 million/5.9 million euro) from 28.2 million levs on Friday.
BSE's BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, slid 2.91% to 1,158.693. The BG-REIT index, which tracks the performance of real estate investment trusts traded on the stock exchange, lost 1.1% to 103.87.
The Dnevnik 20 index, calculated by local business daily Dnevnik from the share prices of the 20 leading companies in terms of liquidity and market capitalisation, fell 2.33% to 293.74 points.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)