Greek stocks end sharply lower
Greek stocks came under strong selling pressures in the Athens Stock Exchange on Thursday, pushing the composite index of the market towards the 1,100-point level. Traders said the Greek market ignored a recovery in other European markets with bank shares at the focus of selling activity. The composite index of the market dropped 2.11 pct to end at 1,107.98 points, after falling as much as 2.33 pct during the session. Turnover was a strong 129.40 million euros.
The Large Cap index ended 2.24 pct down and the Mid Cap index fell 1.06 pct. Eurobank Properties (2.27 pct), Hellenic Petroleum (1.16 pct), Coca Cola HBC (1.12 pct) and OPAP (0.25 pct) were the only blue chip stocks to end higher, while Alpha Bank (5.94 pct), Ellaktor (5.76 pct), Motor Oil (4.97 pct), Piraeus Bank (4.93 pct), GEK Terna (4.35 pct) and Hellenic Exchanges (4.14 pct) suffered the heaviest percentage losses of the day.
Among market sectors, the Real Estate (1.55 pct), Food (1.12 pct) and Media (0.33 pct) scored gains, while Banks (3.76 pct), Raw Materials (3.51 pct) and Financial Services (3.33) suffered losses.
Broadly, decliners led advancers by 80 to 35 with another 21 issues unchanged. ANEK (17.50 pct), Altec (16.0 pct) and Varvaresos (12.90 pct) were top gainers, while Dionic (14.29 pct), Lavipharm (12.32 pct) and Yalco (11.27 pct) were top losers.
