Idleness and no risk-on sentiment were recorded in the stock market, with banks completing five straight negative sessions and selected blue chips trying to hold the market.
Specifically, the General Index moved steadily down but within an extremely narrow range of just 6.03 points and finished with a marginal loss of 0.08% at 1,468.1 points.
Turnover was just 68.99 million euros, of which 6 million in 7 packages (2 in Piraeus for 2.69 million) with a trading volume of 15.956 million pieces.
The banking index closed down 1.1% at 1,279.5 points, the FTSE gained a subtle +0.01% to 3,575.9 points, and the FTSEM mid-cap closed down -0.39% to 2,308.41 points.
The market today had a highly "summer" session looking only to preserve gains under the weight of the dividend cuts that the day had (National Bank €0.362 but also PPA €1.336, ABAX €0.03), which of course it managed quite easily with sellers confirming once again in July their reluctance to move.
Thus, Athens Avenue remains in a good position, at least diagrammatically, to move again towards the 1,500-point milestone, although, as is obvious, for any meaningful conclusion to emerge, an increase in turnover is required.
Otherwise, the international sentiment seems to be levelling off after last week's correction, with the global investment community's gaze now turning to the US, where the Federal Reserve meets for the last time for the summer (30/31 July), under increased bets on the possibility that Governor Jay Powell will signal the first rate cut of the current cycle for the next meeting in September.
PICTURE ON BOARD
As mentioned above, National Bank (6m) at -3.96% and €8.096 due to dividend weighed on the board, with Piraeus (8.8m) essentially unchanged at €3.778 (-0.05%).
However, Eurobank, with the largest turnover of the session at 10.1 million from losses of up to -1.18%, turned positive with +0.59% at 2.05 million, as did Alpha (3.1 million), which closed at 1.666 million with +0.36%.
At the top of the FTSE was Titan (986k) with a 2.37% jump to a new record of 32.35 euros; OTE (4.9m) continued "without brakes" from last week's +5% with new gains today of 1.22% to 14.99 euros; and Motor Oil (2.3m) followed closely with +1.2% to 23.6 euros.
In other buyers' picks, Elvalhalcor (144k) closed up 0.98% and PPC (2.2m) closed up +0.86%, while OPAP (1.8m) and Metlen (4.9m) both rose 0.38%.
Among the sellers in the 25-share, Ellaktor (329k) was down 1.46% at EUR 2.03, with ELPE (1.5m) down -0.48% at EUR 7.3.
In the lower layers, PPA (92k) fell to 25.9 euros at -5.82% after the dividend cut, and AVAX (93k) fell to 1.406 euros at -2.36% on its own. Profile (215k) also posted a significant loss of 2.7%, retreating to 5 euros.
On the other hand, EXASE (163 thousand) gained 1.9% to 4.79 euros ahead of the afternoon announcement of its results.
