Serbian Stock Indices Extend Losses in Low Volumes, Mirror U.S. Rout

“The market was influenced by what happened in the U.S. – they government [there] did not approve the rescue plan,” Danko Knezevic, a broker with Delta brokerage, told SeeNews.

The main Wall Street index plunged more than 5.0% after the $700 billion U.S. bailout plan failed on Monday, a fall bigger than the one after the September 11th terrorist attacks, the news agencies reported.

“Our blue-chip [index] experienced a milder version of what happened yesterday in the U.S.,” Knezevic said.

The blue-chip BELEX15 index lost a further 2.22% to close at 1,003.77 after falling 4.33% on Monday. The U.S. stocks had a partial rebound early on Tuesday after their biggest sell-off in years.

The broader BELEXline dropped 1.68% to 1,941.76 on Tuesday, while the joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna fell by 4.92% to 563.78 points.

Total BELEX turnover slipped to 68 million dinars ($1.3 million/ 883,600 euro) from 72 million dinars on Monday.

Blue-chip AIK Banka dropped 2.92% to 4,382 dinars in 16.6 million dinars of turnover, the highest for the day. Blue-chip Univerzal Banka shed 1.09% to 15,825 dinars in 9.0 million dinars of turnover, second highest for Tuesday.

(1 euro = 76.9606 dinars)