ATHEX: Monthly rise of 1.45% on Athinon Avenue

The placement of a 10% in National Bank of Greece dominated the interest of traders and outshone the bourse session on Monday. Therefore sellers increasingly played without an opponent at Athinon Avenue at the start of the week, with the benchmark losing a significant portion of its gains registered last week. Even so, September closed with monthly gains of 1.45%.

The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index closed at 1,451.90 points, shedding 1.14% from Friday's 1,468.70 points. The large-cap FTSE-25 index contracted 1.41%, ending at 3,527.48 points.

The banks index fell 2%, as Piraeus parted with 2.65%, Alpha declined 2.20%, National gave up 2.14% and Eurobank conceded 1.53%. Among the other blue chips, OTE telecom fell 3.67%, Jumbo dropped 2.28%, ElvalHalcor eased 2.19% and Public Power Corporation shrank 1.63%, while Titan Cement earned 0.85%.

In total 31...