Serbian Stocks Take Fresh Breath of Global Optimism after Last Week’s Mayhem

“It was pretty lively today after quite a long time. Both volumes and indices look nice. But we’ll see how long this will last and whether it will last at all,” Nikola Tepavcevic, a broker with Confidence brokerage, told SeeNews.

“It might be just a short breath of optimism, which aims to calm down anxious investors.”

The markets in Asia and Europe opened in positive mood on Monday following serious steps by policymakers to rescue the financial system, including through higher bank desposits guarantees and acquisition of bank stakes by the state.

The blue-chip BELEX15 index added 3.05% at 747.52 points on Monday after plunging massive 25.63% down last week alone. It has shed nearly 68% since the beginning of the year.

“We touched the bottom so we should have rebounded a bit. Not that this rise is something huge. We’ll see how it will be like tomorrow,” Tepavcevic said.

“Besides, all the world bourses look joyful today, so it shows we are part of the world,” he added. “However, we cannot suggest what will happen next only judging from what happened today but I think it should have moved up at least a tad after the catastrophe we suffered last week.”

The composite BELEXline index on Monday regained 1.21% from Friday, reaching 1,553.34 points. Last week it dropped 18.99%. The joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna climbed 0.83% from Friday to 384.68.

Total turnover on the BELEX rose to 228 million dinars dinars ($3.9 million/2.8 million euro) from 179 million on Friday.

Blue-chip heavyweight AIK Banka surged 13.24% to 3,011 dinars after plummeting 11.84% on Friday. The bank posted 45 million dinars of turnover on Monday, the highest for the day.

Chemical producer Galenika Fitofarmacija dropped 5.56% to 2,737 dinars in 31.3 million dinars of turnover, the second highest.

(1 euro = 80.3549 dinars)