The Athens Stock Exchange was caught in the vortex of international pessimism, completing a session in the red without showing any resistance.

The general index risked losing even the supports of 1,430 points and stood at 1,430.9 points with a strong 2.95% drop. The range of today's decline was around 25 points, with the general index closing near the session lows and certainly far from yesterday's close of 1,474.44 points. On a weekly basis, a loss of 2.65% was recorded

The background to today's sell-off is international pessimism, which started yesterday in the US stock markets and spread to Asia and Europe. The latest macroeconomic data in the US has raised concerns that the Federal Reserve has been slow to ease monetary policy and that the US economy will fall into recession. Asian bourses followed suit, with sweeping losses of up to 5% on individual indices and the Japanese market recording its worst session since 2016. 

On the Greek board, banks took the biggest hit, with the relevant index plunging 4% to 1,254.65 points. After a ten-day period full of positive banking news, banks were at the centre of the sell-off, with Piraeus making the biggest correction after having stood out in the previous two sessions.

In particular, Piraeus Bank fell 4.67% to €3.836, Ethniki dropped 3.56% to €7.7, Eurobank lost 3.72% to €2.047 and Alpha Bank closed down 3.73% to €1.628. The latter announced half-year results this morning, with a net profit after tax of 322.5 million euros and a dividend forecast of 35 euros.

The high-cap index also slid 3.16% to 3,488.58 points, with all shares in the red. The biggest weights were Motor Oil (-4%), Viohalco (-3.38%) and Jumbo (-3.07%). 

In today's session statistics, turnover stood at 124.1 million euros, "waking up" the stock market from the summer lethargy it seemed to fall into in the past few days. The trading volume amounted to 27,072,966 and 41,641 transactions were made.