Established: September 1995
Address: Orce Nikolov 75, 1000 Skopje
Republic of North Macedonia
Working hours: 09:00 - 18:00
Contact person: Katerina Jordanovska
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.mse.mk
- Rejoined FEAS in 2022 -
The previous year 2021 was a record year for the Macedonian Stock Exchange - according to many parameters, the best in the last decade. The fear of Covid-19 subsided and people learned to cohabit with the virus, the states injected new liquidity into the economies through both monetary and fiscal channels, investors everywhere thought that the resulting pandemic shock had been overcome, and the inflation created in the meantime was transitory.
But in 2022, the economic movements, and thus the conditions of the global, regional and local stock markets, became even more complicated. Disrupted supply chains have not stabilized. On the contrary. The prices of many products and services continued to rise, and the energy crisis that began in 2021 intensified. The war in Ukraine put all this into "warp" speed. It is known that the world's main stock indexes experienced serious declines this year. As for the Macedonian securities market, the price levels in 2022, measured through the main stock market index MBI10, recorded a minus of about 8%. That is generally a smaller correction compared to the world's largest stock markets, and compared to the region, Slovenia is minus 17%, and Croatia and Bulgaria have a smaller decline, of about 5%. Other smaller stock exchanges in the countries of the so-called Western Balkans are even in the plus - which probably shows their uncorrelation with developed markets. In 2022, a total turnover of around 121 million euros was achieved, of which some 67 million euros are accounted for by shares traded in the BEST system. This year, compared to last year, the total turnover decreased by a significant 42%. However, if we compare only the stock turnover in the BEST system, the annual decrease is less than 23%. This, as well as the achieved price performance, if we consider what 2022 brought us, is not bad at all. The additional analysis of the turnover structure shows that the largest decline was observed in block transactions, but that is expected when there are so many uncertainties, major ownership shifts in companies should not be present.
The beginning of the war in Ukraine at the end of February last year was a very strong blow for all stock markets in the form of a significant downward price correction. Wars, economically speaking, primarily mean uncertainty, and most projections and perceptions become negative. As we have already mentioned before – this war was only the last link in the chain of negative events in the last three years that strongly affected economic flows and stock market movements everywhere. Subsequently, the stock markets entered a period of great uncertainty, with strongly oscillating price movements, that is, a period in which the paradigms that were valid years ago are clearly changing. In today's world, something that was previously thought no longer possible is more likely to happen. Politically, such as war in Europe, return of nuclear threats, multipolar antagonism, energy geopolitics, stimulated emigration, and economically - high inflation, rising interest rates, creeping and/or negative growth rates, trade wars, protectionism and resignation of globalization. Hence, the so-called market sentiment of the stock exchanges is unstable and subject to easy and quick changes, and the overall environment is extremely fragile and unpredictable. All stock markets, including ours, because of all this, function and will function in a dynamic and turbulent environment.