Athinon Avenue

Athinon Avenue returned to action on Tuesday after a four-day recess and rewarded those anticipating its reopening with a wholesome session of growth that boosted the benchmark by over 1.7% and pushed daily turnover above 100 million euros. However, the main index once again proved not ready to clear the 1,100-point bar.

The US Fed and European Central Bank rate hikes went largely according to expectations, so eurozone stock markets, including Greece's, proceeded smoothly on Thursday with sessions of mild gains.

Athinon Avenue gave up 7.36% over the month of January after another day of losses on Friday for the benchmark and the majority of stocks. The prospect of tighter restrictions and concerns over when the economy will start to recover continued to put pressure on prices.

Just like in Tuesday's session, stocks started with gains at Athinon Avenue on Thursday but eventually had to settle for losses. Despite the positive start on Wall Street, the closing auctions at the same time in Athens took the main index lower, beyond -1%, on increased turnover.

The auction of the Attiki Odos project for the extension of Kymis Avenue in northern Athens is expected in the first half of 2021, in the hope that it will ease the pressure on Kifissou Avenue and ensure access to the Athens-Lamia National Highway.

A man who was gunned down in his car in the western Athenian suburb of Haidari on Tuesday, in a possible organized crime turf war, is in critical condition at the capital's Attiko general hospital.
The businessman is believed to be involved in illegal gambling activities and may have been targeted by a rival gang, initial investigations have indicated.

Lackluster buying interest on the bourse and the sudden drop in action in the last three hours of the session, after the Athens earthquake, resulted in minor losses for the majority of stocks at Athinon Avenue, but the week still closed with gains.

The Greek stock market is bracing for an outflow of listed companies in April, further reducing Greek and foreign investors' options on the Athens bourse. A number of companies started the exodus - which is set to peak next month - in the last week, while there doesn't appear to be any interest in new listings.

Two would-be robbers tried to hold up a gas station in Aegaleo, western Athens, in the early hours of Friday morning but were thwarted by the employee who had been on duty at the time.

The two perpetrators, who were both wearing masks, entered the gas station on the corner of Athinon Avenue and Ethnarchou Makariou Street at 5.20 a.m., according to the employee's account of events.

The stock rebalancing due to changes in the MSCI indexes led to significant shifts in the closing auctions of Thursday's trading session in Athens that accounted for about two-thirds of the entire day's turnover. It concluded the month of May at Athinon Avenue, with the benchmark suffering losses of 11.93 percent over that period.