Weak telecoms drag stocks 1.01 percent lower
Sliding telecom stocks took the Athens bourse 1.01 percent lower yesterday as investors locked in gains in index heavyweight OTE Telecom and followed weak performances in European bourses. The slide in Europe contributed to local weakness, but the market does look tired, said Costas Theodoropoulos, fund manager at Allianz. The Athens benchmark general index slipped below the 2,600 point mark to close at 2,584.98 points. Telecom stocks lost 1.51 percent and OTE Telecom fell 2.79 percent to 18.14 euros after gaining almost 3.5 percent on Wednesday. Mobile operator Panafon fell 1.01 percent to 5.90 euros but peer CosmOTE bucked the sector’s downtrend trend, rising 1.21 percent to 11.74 euros. The blue chip index lost 1.10 percent to 1,424.95 points and banks shed 1.08 percent. Mid-caps shed 1.07 percent and small-caps retreated 0.90 percent. Bellwether National slipped 1.62 percent to 26.80 euros and Alpha Bank lost 1.46 percent to 20.30 euros. Turnover was 205.16 million euros. Losers beat winners 255 to 66, with 32 unchanged on 353 traded. During the period of Frankish rule, the sweet wine was sold by foreign merchants, chiefly Venetians and Genoese, who named it Commandaria, not because it came from the villages in the knights’ fiefdom, but because of the prestige chivalry could claim among the Catholic peoples of Western Europe and the pilgrims who used to call in at Cyprus on the way to the Holy Land, where ships and travelers took on supplies of sweet wine.
