ATHEX: Minor ripples in bourse’s still waters

The year’s final bourse session at Athinon Avenue will start on Friday with the benchmark just above 920 points, close to the year’s high, despite the minor losses most blue chips incurred on Thursday. On another day with particularly low turnover, banks headed south while construction companies ended higher, causing some minor ripples in the all-but-still waters of the end-of-year stock trading in Athens.

The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index closed at 920.82 points, shedding 0.32% from Wednesday’s 923.79 points.

The large-cap FTSE-25 index contracted 0.39% to end at 2,228.57 points.

The banks index declined 0.47%, as Alpha dropped 0.60%, Eurobank gave up 0.57% and National conceded 0.54%, while Piraeus moved 0.21% higher.

Aegean Airlines parted with 2.75% and Sarantis eased 1.51%, just as Ellaktor earned 2.64%.

In total 52 stocks collected gains, 55 suffered losses and 13 remained unchanged.

Turnover amounted to 30.3 million euros, down from Wednesday’s €36 million.

In Nicosia, the general index of the Cyprus Stock Exchange decreased 0.61% to close at 88.97 points.