Strongest month in last 10 years
The Athens bourse ended the month of April with gains of almost 22 percent over March, its strongest monthly performance in 10 years. The benchmark general index added 3.18 percent to 2,053.74 points on Thursday, April’s last trading day. Banks shot up just under 6 percent, led by gains of 6.41 and 7.81 percent in National Bank and Alpha Bank respectively. Investors will be looking to foreign bourses to see whether the market will be able to extend its gains. Late yesterday, stocks in London were off 0.01 percent as bankruptcy proceedings for US auto giant Chrysler began in New York and the United States released mixed data on manufacturing. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up just 0.10 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq index was down 0.14 percent in afternoon trading.
