BELGRADE (Serbia), November 23 (SeeNews) – The blue-chip BELEX15 index of the Belgrade Stock Exchange (BELEX) ended slightly lower on Friday after falling sharply throughout the week, brokers said.
“It seems the rampant selling has halted a bit,” a broker told SeeNews. “Today it even looked like the indices would end in the plus column in the last few moments of trading.”
The BELEX15 slipped 0.31% to close at 2,203.23 points. It has lost 8.58% since last Friday, recording its largest drop since May, of 4.95%, on Tuesday. The broader BELEXline index edged up 0.02% to 3,742.50. The joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna dropped 2.78% to end at 1,183.17.
“We were all surprised by this week’s performance, which leaves me quite uncomfortable to give any forecasts for the next one,” the broker added.
Traders said the market correction was due mainly to the negative influence of the global credit crisis and to uncertainties over the unresolved status of Serbia’s U.N.-administered province of Kosovo. A new round of talks on Kosovo's status is due to be concluded by December 10.
So far in November Belgrade blue chips have lost 12.06%, after sagging by 11.14% in October, as the Kosovo situation had made investors wary of entering the Serbian market, market participants said.
“Probably the interesting thing today [on BELEX] was the big volumes traded in Banat, which was surprising as the company has never traded in such volumes,” the broker said. “The rest was standard.”
Shares in edible oil factory Banat dropped 15.0% to 17,000 dinars ($310/210 euro) in 19 million dinars of turnover, the fourth largest for the day, while blue chip AIK Banka lost 0.91% to 8,904 dinars in the biggest BELEX turnover of over 72 million dinars.
Total BELEX turnover fell to 284 million dinars from 417 million on Thursday.
(1 euro = 81.11 dinars)