"The tension in front of the parliament building, the ongoing gas crisis, the return of investors after the holidays and the poor performance of the global markets yesterday are expected to have a negative effect on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) trading today, Dimitar Georgiev, broker at Elana Trading, told Profit.bg.

The fundamentals of the companies (compared to their stock prices) are definitely in favor of the buyers, but the abovementioned factors gives them grounds not to be active at present with the hope of getting even lower stock prices.

„That is why bears will most likely dominate the market today," according to Dimitar Georgiev. „Of course, all these are short-term factors that could change. If Bulgaria manages to preserve its political and financial stability in 2009, the market may post considerable gains in a very short period of time," Georgiev added.

The indexes ended yesterday's session in negative territory. SOFIX erased 4.38% of its value, to 331.67 points. BG40 shed 3.27% to 102.45 points, while BG TR30 dropped by 4.34%, to 248.00 points. BG REIT ended the day 3.16% lower at 45.97 points.

BSE's overall turnover came to 1.6 mln leva yesterday, while its market capitalization declined to 11.8 bln leva. A total of 85 issues were traded yesterday with 16 of the companies posting stock price gains.

The article is not a recommendation for buying/selling stock!