Folli Follie

The sixth consecutive week of losses ended on the Greek bourse yesterday with a mixed performance on Friday. The benchmark had not seen six straight weeks of decline in three years.

The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index closed at 745.55 points, adding 0.10 percent to Thursday's 744.80 points. On a weekly basis it slumped 1.33 percent.

The reaction of investors to the drop in stock prices on the Greek bourse in recent days wasn't strong enough to offer any optimism in the medium term, but it did halt the losing streaks of both the benchmark and the banks indices on Tuesday.

The first half of the year has just ended with the main index of the Athens stock market adding a remarkable 27.98 percent in that period, thanks to five consecutive months of growth (unseen since late 2013) capped by a 6.26 percent rise in June.

The Greek bourse continued to slide on Wednesday, led by bank stocks and Public Power Corporation, with traders waiting to see how the new round of negotiations with the country's creditors goes ahead of next week's Eurogroup, as demostrated by another day of low turnover.

Featuring the lowest daily turnover in the last 20 sessions, the Greek stock market edged higher on Friday, managing to close at the day's high thanks to some positive corporate news for smaller firms such as Galaxidi Marine Farm and Boutaris.

The benchmark of the Greek stock market prose for the seventh session in a row on Wednesday, on the eve of an extraordinary meeting of the Euro Working Group to discuss progress in talks on Greece's bailout review. Alpha Bank buoyed all the main indices higher while trading volume remained above 100 million euros.

Despite bank stocks' notable slide on Thursday, the benchmark of the Greek bourse only posted a small drop as most other stocks ended the day in positive territory after another session of very thin trading.

The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index closed at 683.57 points, shedding 0.24 percent from Wednesday's 685.19 points. It ended the week up 0.37 percent.

The losses sustained by bank stocks at the start of the trading week weighed on the Greek bourse benchmark in what was a rather nervous session in view of Monday's Eurogroup meeting. As a result, the main index ended lower, even though most other blue chips posted gains.

Stocks on the Athens bourse had a rather quiet start to the week on Tuesday, the same day that talks resumed on the second bailout review, with expectations remaining low for now. Trading volume only increased somewhat during the closing auctions.

The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index closed at 645.88 points, adding 0.08 percent to Friday's 645.37 points.

The decline that began on Friday continued on Monday on the local stock market as uncertainty over the course of Greece's second bailout review and the country's future funding showed no sign of dissipating.