Drop continued on local bourse but rebound expected
Stocks on the Greek bourse continued to decline last week, with investors keeping their eyes firmly focused on the developments at National Bank. The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index starts the new week today at 1,514.26 points. This is 3.02 percent below the 1,468.52-point level at which it started a week ago. The local market is clearly functioning at a great distance from its European peers, as it failed to follow the rising trend across the continent. However, an Emporiki Bank report suggests that certain technical indexes indicate it may experience a bit of a rise over the next few days. After all the Greek market has already lost 33 percent of its value in the first three quarters of the year, which entails over 25 billion euros in losses for its capitalization. Many companies are already considering this year as a loss and are accelerating spending cuts through the end of the year; these mostly concern closing down subsidiaries, freezing new investment and cutting jobs. Daily turnover averaged 106.7 million euros last week, up from 95.2 million euros the week before.