With banks continuing "without brakes,"  the stock exchange comfortably overcame the dividend cuts and climbed to the 1,480 zone amid markedly upgraded international sentiment in the wake of Biden's decision to withdraw from seeking a second presidential term.

Specifically, the General Index moved steadily upwards and closed at 1,482.43 points with a gain of 1.23% to essentially the high of the day (1,483.32 points).

This was despite several dividend cuts on the day, namely in the shares of PPC (0.25 euro/share), EVDAP (0.10 euro/share), Iatrik Athinon (0.02 euro/share), and Space Hellas (0.16 euro/share), but also in Ellactor, which was without the right to a capital return of 0.50/share (20% return).

Turnover moved back to recent lows, although slightly higher today at 97 million, with only 4.5 of them in blocks (2 in Piraeus for 3.8 million) while 23.53 million blocks were traded.

The banking index recorded another strong rise of +2.04% to 1,348.71 points, the FTSE followed with +1.43% to 3,629.22 points, as did the mid-cap FTSEM, which posted a more modest rise of 0.9% to 2,328.37 points.

As noted above, banks dominated the board, with OTE and a number of energy heavyweights alongside them.

Piraeus, which topped the turnover list with 17.3 million, moved to €3.989 with +2.28%, Alpha (12.5 million) at €1.7225 with +2.65%, Eurobank (7 million) at €2.24 with +2.33%, while ΝΒG (9.9 million) lagged a little behind with +1.37% at €8.414.

OTE, which broke the bank turnover frame (4th highest at 8.5m), jumped 2.83% to 14.55 euros, Motor Oil (3.6m) closed +2.52% at 23.58 euros and Metlen (6.6m) closed +1.5% at 23.58 euros.

The "heavy" Coca-Cola (520k euros) gave an additional boost with +1.65% at 33.22 euros, with the shares of the Stasinopoulos group all moving strongly upwards. Elvalhalcor (253k) with +2.05%, Biohalco (630k) with +1.87% and Cenergy (1m) with +0.94%. ELPE (1.5 million) and OTE (4.6 million) both gained around 1.3%.

On the other hand, Ellaktor (931k) fell 18.99% to EUR 2.09 due to the capital return, Jumbo (2.6m) at EUR 25.2 with -0.55%, while PPC (1.4m) limited losses to -0.35% despite the cutback, and EYDAP (263k) also at -0.34%.

In the mid-cap sector, Thrace Plastics moved strongly higher for a third day, this time +4.3% (€4.04) on turnover of €590k, with Quest, Fourlis and AVAX all up more than 3%, while Dimand corrected -2.09%.

In the lower layers, Attica Bank (623k) reached the limit down (-30%) and eventually closed down -25.4% at 9.1 euros, ahead of the approval in parliament of the merger agreement with Pancretia.

On the other hand, EKTEP, after the 2-to-1 split announced, rallied 5.7% to 3.7 euros with a turnover of 145 thousand euros.