The Athens Stock Exchange surrendered to the international bearish sentiment today, with buyers showing no inclination to move and banks finding a correction opportunity from the monthly rally they have been running.

In particular, the General Index moved steadily downward and closed at the day's low of 1,466.73 points, down 0.91%.

Turnover amounted to 93.3 million, of which 13.1 million in 14 blocks (2 in Piraeus for 3.8 million, one in OPAP for 2.6 million, and one in Intralot for 2 million) with a trading volume of 26.2 million blocks.

As mentioned above, the banking index came under the most pressure and fell to 1,317.44 points with a loss of 2.03%, the FTSE high cap fell 1.19% to 3,576.24 points; and the FTSEM mid cap fell mildly to 2,326.42 points with a loss of -0.3%.

European indices, however, "escaped" from their daily lows, albeit firmly in negative territory, something the Athens market did not do with buyers remaining largely observers throughout the day.

The session, however, was largely profit-taking in nature, given that the banks where sellers focused are the "champions" of July, with gains for the sectoral sector having exceeded 11% the day before yesterday.

It should be noted that in today's auction of EUR 500 million six-month bonds, the yield was 3.3%, with bids exceeding the asking price by 2.39 times.

The diversification of ΝBG (8.2 million) in the banking sector was noticeable, as it limited losses to 1.18%, retreating to 8.35 euros.

On the contrary, Piraeus, which was also at the top of the turnover today with 15.8 million euros and the packages continuing (3.8 million), moved with a loss of 2.81% at 3.81 euros, Alpha Bank (10.5 million) retreated to 1.685 euros with -2.29% and Eurobank (9.3 million) to 2.17 euros with -2.65%.

OTE (4 million) came under similar pressure, falling to 14.23 euros with -2.13% with the deletion of 5.3 million treasury shares today, as did Elvalhalcor with a small turnover of 216 thousand euros but -2.23% at 1.84 euros.

Titanas (1.2 million) with a 3.41% jump to 31.8 euros and Jumbo (4.65 million) at 24.98 euros with 1.05 euros attempted to provide some support, but only TERNA Energy (4.2 million) and Coca-Cola (159 million) were next to them with a positive sign in the 25-share index, both with marginal gains of less than 0.2%.

In the remaining sellers' picks, Motor Oil (3.7m) broke its 4-day upward streak with -1.94% at EUR 23.24, with ELPE (1.6m) on a similar pace at EUR 7.42 with -1.85%.

GEK TERNA (2.2m) backed down to EUR 17.68 with -1.45%, PPC (1.6m) retreated to EUR 11.53 with -1.45% and Biohalco (502k) backed down to EUR 5.87 with -1.68%.

Metlen (3.3m) fell 1.1% to 36 euros ahead of its half-year results tomorrow and AIA (399k), Aegean (426k) and Sarantis (224k) all closed down around 1.3%.

In the lower layers, against the mood of the day, Attica Symmetries gained 3.5% to EUR 2.63 with a turnover of EUR 277k, while Quest (405k) erased gains of up to 3.3% (EUR 5.58) to close at -1.67% (EUR 5.31).