SOFIA (Bulgaria), March 21 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian stocks kept falling on Friday in lower turnover as bearish sentiment continued to dominate the market, brokers said.
The SOFIX index, which includes the 19 most liquid stocks on the Bulgarian Stock exchange (BSE), fell 3.65% to close for the first time since December 2006 below 1,200 points at 1,185.50. The broad BG 40 index, which tracks the 40 most liquid companies on the bourse, slid 2.66% to 338.71.
"The fall, which is not due to domestic factors, continued today," Svetozar Abrashev, a broker at First Financial Brokerage House (FFBH), told SeeNews. "It all started from abroad, as there was no [negative] change in the fundamentals [of Bulgarian companies] and, on the contrary, they posted better results [for 2007]."
Turbulence on global markets since the beginning of the year made foreign investors reduce their Bulgarian portfolios, intensifying a downward trend which started in early November. The collapse of Bear Stearns and fears that the U.S. credit crisis could claim more high-profile victims fuelled the fall on the BSE this week.
This week SOFIX plummeted 10.35% while BG 40 plunged 9.46%.
The biggest fallers among the blue-chips on Friday were Bulgaria’s largest road construction company Holding Roads and the country's second-largest lead and zinc smelter OTZK.
Holding Roads dropped 9.0% to 1,020 levs and OTZK lost 8.2% to 55.10 levs.
Overall, 105 shares fell, 32 gained and 18 ended flat.
BSE's total turnover, excluding block transactions and other pre-agreed deals, fell to 9.4 million levs ($7.5 million/4.8 million euro) from 11.2 million levs on Thursday.
BSE's BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, lost 2.43% to 781.33 points. The BG-REIT index tracking the performance of real estate investment trusts, decreased 0.21% to 95.86 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, fell 3.76% to 174.85 points.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)
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