Blue chips drag index down toward 4,600 pts
Greek stocks continued their decline yesterday, with the Athens Stock Exchangeís general index falling 0.86 percent from 4,644.10 points on Tuesday to 4,604.07 points. Once again it was blue chips driving the market lower, with the FTSE/ASE 20 dropping 1.03 percent to close at 2,466.38 points. Mid-caps declined by 0.45 percent, while small-caps remained unchanged. The FTSE/Athex International index lost 0.93 percent, closing at 6,553.43 points. Coca-Cola HBC led the rising blue chips with a significant 2.51 percent growth of its stock value, followed by ATEbank with 1.05 percent. However, most blue chips headed southward, with the greatest losses sustained by PPC (down 4.65 percent), Cosmote (2.50 percent), OPAP (2.42 percent), Hellenic Technodomiki (2.17 percent), Folli-Follie (1.91 percent) and National Bank (1.83 percent). All but five sectoral indices closed lower, led by utilities (down 3.36 percent), personal and household goods (2.22 percent) and travel and entertainment (1.86 percent). The greatest gains were made by food and drink (up 1.87 percent), chemicals (1.58 percent) and insurance (1.46 percent). Turnover came to 554.529 million, including 218.446 million in prearranged trades.
