Bulgarian Stocks Lose Ground in Sluggish Trade

The SOFIX index, which includes the 20 most liquid stocks on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE), fell 1.07% to 598.51 points, while the broader BG 40 index, which tracks the 40 most traded shares on the bourse, lost 1.33% to 159.13.

“The market ended in the red for a [second] consecutive session in low turnovers, which we have got accustomed to seeing lately," Tamara Becheva, analyst at Elana Trading, told SeeNews.

She added that weak investor activity and lack of buyers pushed stock prices down.

On Thursday, fallers led advancers by 66 to 22, with 20 shares ending unchanged.

Among the biggest gainers was blue-chip drug maker Sopharma, which surged 9.49% to close at 2.36 levs in a volume of over 47,000 shares.

Becheva said that the drug maker's share price was lifted by several deals at the end of the session and described Thursday’s volumes in Sopharma as moderate.

BSE's turnover, excluding block and other pre-agreed deals, fell to 2.8 million levs ($1.8 million/1.4 million euro) from 3.9 million levs on Wednesday.

The BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, slid 2.52% to 410.80 points and the BG-REIT index, tracking the performance of real estate investment trusts, plunged 6.89% to 57.19.

The steepest decliners among the REITs were Bulgarian Real Estate Fund, which plummeted 17.95% to 0.90 levs in a volume of over 105,370 shares, and Advance Terrafund which nosedived 18.8% to 1.20 levs with over 144,000 shares changing hands.

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, lost 2.63% to 80.42 points.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)