At the end of February 2008 the number of Bulgarians using BSE's online trading system (COBOS) stood at 5551, the bourse's statistics shows.

This means that one in 1383 people in the country trades online (according to the National Statistics Institute, Bulgaria's population totals 7.679 mln people).

The Investment Intermediaries

Investment intermediary Karoll has the most clients (1,334 people), according to February statistics. Next are BenchMark Finance and Elana Trading. The biggest intermediary outside the capital city continues to be Ug Market.

A total of 12 intermediaries have more than 100 clients (versus five last year).

The Hike

The number of COBOS certificates nearly doubled during the past year, from 2799 in February 2007 to 5551 this year. In February 2006 the figure was 1663.

118 new certificates were issued last month.

How much does it cost?

“Client Order-Book Online System (COBOS)” is an interet application with authorized secured access to BSE's trade system. If you are interested in online stock trading, just ask your nearest investment intermediary. Most of them offer this service with no annual fee, the commissions vary between 0.3 and 1%.

№IntermediaryFeb 2008Feb 20071Karoll13347412BenchMark Finance9614163Elana Trading9494384Ug Market2931035Eurobank EFG1791086SIS166677Capman165688Popular Casa 95145659Zagora Finarcoop 1177010Bulbrokers1114411Bora Invest1078512Real Finance1033013Varchev Finance874714Somoni FB753915FFBH723616Status Invest654117BG Proinvest624718MKB Unionbank582519KD Securities563920Piraeus Bank438