Stock market

The last bourse session before Christmas at Athinon Avenue brought most listed companies a welcome festive gift, as sellers stood out for their absence, leaving buyers to have a field day on reduced turnover.

Despite the strong rally by Greek stocks since the start of the year, HSBC estimates the Athens Exchange still has great potential to climb further. On Tuesday the British bank upgraded its recommendation for the local market from neutral to overweight, stressing that Greece's macroeconomic prospects have improved considerably after the elections, with a positive impact on stocks.

The benchmark index of the Greek stock market posted a weekly advance at the end of Friday's session, buoyed by Standard & Poor's credit rating upgrade for Greece and hopes that DBRS will follow suit. That enthusiasm appeared to run out of steam on Friday though, as trade slumped and the main index ended marginally lower on the day.

A growing number of private equity firms are taking advantage of Europe's buoyant bond market to extract money from companies they hold by loading them with debt, prompting some investors to warn the fixed income rally is nearing its peak.

A bourse filing by Eurobank late on Wednesday may well mark the end of a five-year period during which foreign investors' attitude toward Greece was one of uncertainty and major foreign institutional portfolios abstained from Greek transactions.

The stock market's positive reaction to the European Commission's approval of the state's bad-loan reduction plan boosted bank stocks and helped the benchmark climb further during trading on Thursday at Athinon Avenue.

The Prime Minister of the State Commission on Stock Exchanges and Markets Vladimir Ivanov shared that the pork prices in the country are artificially inflated, "Trud" newspaper reported. The price at the Bulgarian markets is around BGN 8.50 per kg. Meanwhile  Docked on the international stock exchange, the price drops to USD 1.44 dollars per kilogram.

The blow dealt by the bankruptcy of UK tour operator Thomas Cook to the Greek economy was too big for traders at the local stock market to ignore on Monday, leading to significant losses for many stocks, albeit on rather low turnover.

The Greek stock market benchmark ended its four-session rising streak on Monday, as the major surge in the Public Power Corporation's stock price was not enough to avert the slide in the main index that was largely brought on by anticipated profit taking by traders.

The Koutsolioutsos family, the main (but not majority) owners of jewelry and fashion accessories company Folli Follie, want to use the September 10 company shareholders' meeting to absolve them of any responsibility for the financial collapse of the company.