Tuesday’s sluggish trade on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) was again dominated by pre-arranged deals, involving only shares of rubber products maker Kauchuk.

The company shed 2.78% of its market value in a volume of BGN 630,000, representing almost the entire trade turnover on the unofficial market, closing at BGN 88.90 apiece.

Of the stock indices, only SOFIX of the blue chips turned green, but it was pale, ending at 358.83 points. The broader BG40 and the sector index BGREIT dropped 1 point to 102.98 and 38.65, respectively. BGTR30, which gauges the performance of the stocks with the highest market capitalisation and liquidity, retreated slightly to 272.60 points.

Blue chips saw shares worth just BGN 150,000 change hands during yesterday’s session. One-third of the official-market turnover was generated by drug maker Sopharma, which added 0.5% to BGN 3.8 per share.

“Stock markets reflect the economy,” said Apostol Apostolov of TBI. He explained that Bulgaria’s flagging economic growth is unable to attract foreign investors. “When the economy was booming by 6-7%, the bourse was enjoying big turnover,” he added. To illustrate this, he said volumes half an hour into trade was just BGN 1,900 and not a single deal was struck within 22 minutes, a performance he dubbed an anti-record.