Serbian Stock Market Tallies Up Week of Steep Losses, Block Deal Boosts Friday Turnover

“The lack of fresh capital on our market is crucial,” a local broker told SeeNews. “The pullback among foreign investors is also evident as they play a big part on the sell side. The foreign investment funds own such big stakes that they can’t close their positions without sending prices crashing.”

The blue-chip BELEX15 index closed down 2.20% at 562.53 points on Friday, following a 4.83% drop on Thursday. It was the benchmark's ninth consecutive negative close. It has plummeted by a weekly 15.02% and has lost some 76% since the beginning of the year due to increased risk aversion among investors fuelled by the global financial crisis.

The composite BELEXline index dropped 1.77% to 1,234.18 points, its lowest mark so far in 2008. Its weekly drop was 9.78%. The joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna lost 0.35% to 263.96.

Total BELEX turnover dropped to some 100 million dinars ($1.4 million/1.1 million euro) from 476 million on Thursday, when a pre-agreed deal in blue chip Univerzal Banka contributed some 420 million dinars of the total. The weekly drop in the total BELEX turnover was 33.42%.

A block deal in lead and zinc mining firm Rudnik contributed 50.8 million dinars on Friday, as 11,993 shares changed hands at 4,234 dinars each.

Blue-chip engineering holding Energoprojekt shed 2.53% to 694 dinars in 7.3 million dinars, the second highest turnover on Friday.

“The dinar/euro rate also doesn’t help as the shares are actually some 10% cheaper than they appear,” the broker said.

The Serbian dinar hit an all-time low of 89.00 versus the euro earlier on Friday after trading below 80.00 only a month ago, the broker said.

(1 euro = 88.4133 dinars)