Athens Stock Exchange started August with a lock on part of yesterday's significant gains from yesterday's session, but with losses kept at very low levels, mainly due to the impressive Piraeus Bank.

In particular, the General Index, after some marginal changes at the opening, moved steadily into negative territory and finally closed at 1,474.44 points with a small loss of 0.25%, but far from the low of the day (1,463.98 points) and even further away from the levels of European indices that recorded declines of more than 1.5% at the close.

The banking index gained the auction signal with +0.13% to 1,306.86 points, while the FTSE fell slightly to 3,602.55 points with -0.12% and the mid-cap FTSEM was at 2,301.09 points with -0.47%.

Piraeus dominated trading, making a turnover of 33 million euros on its own with a new jump of 3.18% that brought it to 4.024 euros, above the placement price (4 euros).

Eurobank (9m) finished with a gain of 0.38% at 2.126 euros, while Alpha (9.4m) fell to 1.691 euros with -0.7% and NBG (9.9m) lost 8 euros, retreating to 7.984 with -1.55%.

Topping the FTSE was Ellaktor (1.1m), which staged a 4.7% upside reaction at 2.05 euros, breaking its 9-day downward streak after the capital return, with Cenergy (1.3m) following close behind at 9.93 euros with +2.8%.

OTE (8.6m) Biohalco (640k) was also slightly up in the region of +0.5%, while Titan (640k) improved albeit slightly by +0.3% to its all-time high now at 33 euros.

On the other hand, PPC (2.3m) was under pressure, falling to EUR 11.5 with -2.29%, with Aegean (1.3m) at EUR 11.36 with -1.22%, ELPE (1.2m) at EUR 7.32, and OPAP (3.2m) at 15.95% with -0.99%.

In the mid-cap Intralot turned over 1.3m with a small loss of 0.3% at 1.23 euros, while Kri Kri (113k) and Premia (156k) both gained around 0.85%.