Stocks post small gains in week’s last session

Following intense profit-taking at the Greek stock market on Thursday, Friday’s trading session started with hopes that the benchmark would post a robust rise.

However, subsequent pressure on banking stocks dashed that optimism, and threatened to push the main index into negative territory.

Sliding European markets and turbulence in emerging markets following the recent drop of the Turkish lira weighed on the Athens Stock Exchange, preventing a recovery of the benchmark losses registered over the week.

The ATHEX general index was up 2.30 percent at one point during Friday’s session, but it ended with modest gains of 0.36 percent, at 710.35 points.

The large-cap index rose 0.40 percent while the banking index shed 1.60 percent.

Turnover came to 41.2 million euros.

On a weekly basis, the general index gave up 4.49 percent and the banking index slumped 10.68 percent.

As noted by Kyklos Securities, despite the uncertainty as to what will happen to the Greek economy after the country exits its third bailout program on August 20, the recent profit-taking by foreign institutional investors at the Athens Stock Exchange has been exaggerated.

However, the fact that the Greek market made limited gains on Friday despite the initial jump raises concerns regarding how the market will react in the following days, when developments in both Turkey and Italy are expected to result in further investor jitters.