Pressure on blue chips
The Athens Stock Exchange composite share price index closed last Friday at 4,139.96 points, a drop of 59.15 points or 1.41 percent on the previous week’s close. Only four sessions took place last week, due to the Easter holidays. The market reopens today. Turnover rose to 1.45 billion euros, an average of 363.73 million euros per session, from 252.03 million the previous week. All major indices lost ground, with the exception of small-caps: The FTSE/Athex 20 index of blue chips dropped 1.65 percent to close at 2,232.66 points and the FTSE/Athex Mid 40 fell 0.52 percent to close at 4,536.71 points, although the FTSE/Athex Small-Cap 80 added 0.60 percent. The composite FTSE/Athex 140 index fell 1.37 percent to close at 4,940.26 points, while the FTSE/Athex International index declined 1.20 percent to close at 5,788.67 points. Twelve of the 17 sectoral indices sustained losses. The top losers were raw materials (5.77 percent), oil and gas (3.59 percent) and media (2.57 percent). The top gainers were utilities (2.59 percent), construction (1.18 percent) and personal and household goods (0.66 percent). Among individual titles, the top gainers were Spider (22.13 percent), Atti-Kat (20 percent) and Microland Computers (20 percent). The top losers were Elbisco Holdings (21.21 percent), Tria Alfa’s preferred shares (18.40 percent) and Ergas (17.24 percent). OPAP topped the list of the most heavily traded shares, with an average turnover of 79.48 million euros per session. It was trailed by National Bank (30.47 million), OTE (25.95 million) and Piraeus Bank (18.38 million).
