Year ends on a high
The Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) general index closed last Friday, its last session for 2005, at 3,663.90 points, a gain of 67.65 points or 1.88 percent on the previous week’s close. Last week’s gains brought the year’s overall gain to 31.50 percent, marking the third consecutive year that the ASE general index has ended with gains. The general index last reached this level in December 2000. Among the Financial Times indices, the FTSE/ASE Mid-40 performed best in 2005, gaining 47.06 percent to close at 3,397 points. The FTSE/ASE Small-Cap 80, helped by a strong finish, gained 33.31 percent, while the FTSE/ASE-20 index of blue chips, the motor of growth in 2003 and 2004, this year somewhat underperformed the market, gaining 30.47 percent to close at 2,019.04 points. The composite FTSE/ASE-140 index gained 32.39 percent to close at 4,320.08 points. Among the 18 sectoral indices, only one lost ground, slightly, during the year: Publishing and printing slipped 0.48 percent. High oil prices helped refineries (private Motor Oil and state-controlled Hellenic Petroleum) gain 63.82 percent, topping all sectoral indices. They were followed by recovering information technology (up 50.92 percent), insurance (50.56 percent), wholesale commerce (48.06 percent), non-metallic minerals and cement (42.70 percent), industrials (39.31 percent), investments (38.48 percent) and holding companies (37.39 percent), telecommunications (32.60 percent) and banks (28.96 percent). (The figures presented in the tables below do not include Friday’s session.)
