SOFIA (Bulgaria), December 20 (SeeNews) – Most Bulgarian stocks rose on Thursday in a pre-Christmas rally, which is expected to continue on Friday, brokers said.
The blue-chip SOFIX index, which includes the 16 most liquid stocks on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE), rose 4.51% to 1,731.24 points and the broad BG 40 index gained 3.51% to 505.16.
“It is a typical Santa Claus rally,” Krasimir Atanasov, portfolio manager at Elana Fund Management, told SeeNews.
Atanasov said the upward trend was likely to continue in the following trading session, the last one before the BSE closes for 10 days for Christmas and New Year holidays.
The upward trend was likely to be carried over into the first week of January before wearing off afterwards.
“January will be interesting. I will not be surprised if it [market trend] is overall positive, but people will be a lot more cautious,” Atanasov said.
He added an influx of fresh money was needed to liven up the market. On Wednesday Germany's Allianz pension funds in Bulgaria withdrew some 40 million levs ($29.4 million/20.4 million euro) from mutual funds, which drained liquidity from the market, said Atanasov.
“It is not clear how much further Allianz will be going out [of its investments],” Atanasov added.
Industrial group Chimimport and Central Cooperative Bank (CCB), which is part of the group, were among the gainers on Thursday. Chimimport closed 3.7% higher at 15.44 levs in a volume of some 88,840 shares, while CCB surged 14.4% to 10.7 levs with 29,180 shares changing hands.
Overall, 100 shares rose, 27 fell and 21 closed unchanged on Thursday.
BSE’s turnover, excluding block trading and other pre-agreed deals, rose to 19.1 million levs from 23.3 million levs on Wednesday.
The bourse's BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, rose 4.07% to 1,081.98 points and the BG-REIT index, which tracks the performance of real estate investment trust shares, edged 0.24% down to 99.45 points.
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, rose 5.48% to 267.34 points.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)