Heavyweights slide, mid-caps stay on top
Greek stocks lost some ground yesterday, in line with bourses elsewhere in Europe and with interest focused on middle capitalizations, particularly small banks. The Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) general index dropped 0.42 percent to 3.309.62 points. However, Geniki Bank, in which France’s Societe Generale recently augmented its majority, outperformed with gains of 5.65 percent. In addition Aspis Bank advanced 4.49 percent and Egnatia added 3.16 percent. Among blue chips, Hellenic Petroleum gained 2.33 percent to a new year high of 9.66 euros, and Germanos was 1.16 percent higher. In contrast, Coca-Cola HBC lost 2.84 percent, Emporiki Bank 2.42 percent, while the Public Power Corporation and CosmOTE slid 1.45 and 1.23 percent respectively. The blue chip FTSE/ASE-20 index ended 0.32 percent lower, the mid-cap index added 0.45 percent, while the FTSE/ASE small-cap 80 shed 0.24 percent. Refineries outperformed sectoral indices, most of which ended lower, with gains of 1.32 percent, but heavyweight banks and telecoms lost 0.12 and 0.46 percent respectively. Turnover fell substantially to 175.76 million euros, of which 69.5 million was accounted for by the four most heavily traded stocks, OPAP, National Bank, OTE and Alpha Bank. Prearranged block trades totaled 18.94 million euros.
