The stock market has been handed over to geopolitical uncertainty

With the banking sector leading the decline, but also the international climate being strongly negative, the Athens Stock Exchange finally returned to the zone of 950 points, recording losses that refer more to reducing risk.

In particular, the general index closed with losses of 0.85% at 955.37 points, while today it moved between 953.68 points and 963.16 points. The turnover amounted to 56 million euros and the volume to 20.7 million units, while 8.5 million euros were traded through pre-agreed transactions.

The index of high capitalization closed with a fall of 0.90%, at 2,338.55 points, while at -0.70% Mid Cap completed the transactions at 1,595.15 points. The banking index closed with losses of 1.51% at 730.10 points.

Ukraine and … risk reduction

Although the ATHEX has pleasantly surprised participants this year for the resilience it has shown, it can clearly not overcome the recurring concerns about tensions between Russia and the West on the Ukrainian border. And when all the markets in the world are negatively affected, the ATHEX can not climb to levels it had lost seven years ago and has not been able to recover since.

Thus, risk reduction moves were not lacking in the market today, especially in the banking sector, with analysts judging that the current decline was more a result of short-term moves and less of a longer-term strategy. Besides, the industry today had another positive analysis, that of Goldman Sachs, which increased the target prices for Greek banks. That is, for the industry that has led the ATHEX recovery since the beginning of the new year, and as everything shows, it will lead it for a long time to come, as most analysts point out, leaving behind the bad legacy of the crisis and opening a new one. development capital.

In fact, Goldman Sachs believes that Greek banks are on a path of strong recovery of ROTE after about 15 years of clearing the loan portfolio. It predicts that the NPE index of Greek banks will reach a single-digit level in 2022 and beyond the risk absorption period, it expects Greek banks to move towards balance sheet growth.

It is therefore clear that unless the geopolitical sources of uncertainty disappear and it does not clarify, in about a month, what exactly the European Central Bank’s plans will be for managing Greek bonds in the post-PEPP (pandemic program) era, the market will hardly test the four-digit levels in its overall index, as they are only 4% away from the current ones. This is because, as stock market sources in Capital.gr have pointed out, it is in full relation to the behavior of foreigners towards Greek assets.

Dashboard

On the board now, Jumbo closed with losses of 3.77%, with Piraeus, Alpha Bank and Lambda following with losses that exceeded 2%, while those of Ellactor, EYDAP, Mytilineou, Viohalko, GEK Terna and IPTO exceeded 1 %.

Aegean, Eurobank, Ethniki, OPAP, Motor Oil, Sarantis and Titan closed slightly lower, with OTE and Terna Energeiaki closing unchanged. On the other hand, Hellenic Petroleum, PPC, Coca Cola, Quest, PPA and ELHA closed slightly higher.