Stocks slip as early bank-led bounce fizzles away
Equities slipped 0.64 percent yesterday after an early bank-led bounce fizzled as continued weakness in index heavyweight OTE Telecom weighed on market sentiment. Turnover slumped to 71.03 million euros from 146 million euros on Friday on volume of 13 million shares. «OTE’s steep slide and the large sell orders for the shares which looked to have come from abroad last week have made some investors nervous,» said an analyst. OTE ended at 17.42 euros after falling 3 percent on Friday, while its mobile arm CosmOTE ticked up 0.35 percent to 11.40 euros. The telecoms subindex shed 1.14 percent. The Athens benchmark general index ended at 2,511.18 points, after reaching an intrasession high of 2,552.97 points. Banks ended off 0.01 percent. Bellwether National added 0.24 percent to 25.50 euros and Alpha Bank fell 0.53 percent to 18.90 euros. The FTSE/ASE-20 index of blue chips lost 0.46 percent to 1,366.21 points and the FTSE/ASE-40 index of mid-caps lost 0.83 percent. Losers beat winners 228 to 85, with 50 unchanged on 363 traded.(Reuters) Greek-Turkish cooperation
