The upward trend continued today on the Athens Stock Exchange, while international markets also recorded gains, boosted by the encouraging data for the de-escalation of inflation. A positive element on Athens Avenue was the increased transactions with their value breaking the 90 million euro barrier today, in the context of the effort to “beautify” valuations due to the end of the first quarter.

The General Index closed up 0.84% ​​at 1,054.59 points, while the banking index closed unchanged at 759.91 points. In addition, the week closed with gains of 3.27%, while the banking index strengthened by 3.22%. However, month-on-month losses amounted to 6.61% for DG, snapping a five-month winning streak, while banks were the hardest hit, plunging 18.28% in March amid the worst financial crisis worldwide for almost 15 years.

At the same time, the pan-European STOXX 600 index strengthened by 0.64% to 457.7 points, Germany’s DAX gained 0.63% to 15,620.6 points, France’s CAC 40 rose 0.81% to 7,322.2 points , while the FTSE 100 in Britain recorded gains of 0.23% at 7,638 points.

Markets rallied after Eurostat data showed inflation in Greece and the Eurozone eased further in March. In Greece, annual inflation stood at 5.4% according to the first estimates against 6.5% in February, while in the Eurozone at 6.9 against 8.5%.

However, structural inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy sectors, hit a new record. In particular, structural inflation jumped to 5.9% in March, continuing the upward trend of recent months. Indicatively, in February it stood at 5.6%.

In addition, to the “auspicious” reports on the Greek economy of the last few days, HSBC was added today, which upgrades its forecasts for growth to 2.1% (from 1.2% previously), as it notes that Greece is over -yielded in 2022. For 2024, the house expects growth of 1.4% (from 1.7% previously), due to the tightening of financial conditions brought about by the sharp increase in ECB interest rates.

HA: The picture on the board

The high-cap index was at 0.63%, while the mid-cap index was at 0.79%. Of the high capitalization shares, the biggest increase was recorded by the shares of Lamda Development (+3.09%), Motor Oil (+2.87%), PPC (+2.57%), ADMIE (+2 .33%) and Piraeus (+2.23%). On the contrary, the largest decline was recorded by the shares of OPAP (-1.47%), Alpha Bank (-0.71%), Eurobank (-0.65%) and EYDAP (-0.61%).

Of the individual indices, the Oil (+2.675) and Real Estate (+2.43%) indices recorded the biggest gains, while the Travel (-1.33%) and Health (- 0.26%).

The largest volume of transactions was presented by Alpha Bank and Eurobank, trading 7,746,655 and 4,719,665 shares, respectively. The highest value of transactions was recorded by National Bank with 14.58 million euros and OTE with 14.21 million euros.

76 stocks moved up, 30 fell and 14 remained stable. The biggest increase was recorded by the shares: Nakas +7.14% and Ktima Lazaridis +5.45%. The largest decline was registered by the shares: Leventeris(p) -9.62% and Vioter -6.90%.