The morning attempt for a new upward move proved fruitless, and sellers quickly took the lead on the Athens Stock Exchange, amid concerns raised by a Wall Street Journal report that Iran could attempt a strike against Israeli targets in the next 48 hours, as well as fears for the banking sector after the first corporate results in the US.

Turnover amounted to €130 million, but 27.6 million through 25 packages (8.1 million to Mytilineos, 3 to Jumbo for 3.7 million, 5 to ETE for 6.4 million, and 5 to Piraeus for 3.3 million) with a trading volume of 27 million units.

As mentioned above, the banking index came under the most pressure and fell to 1,202.29 points at -2.09%, the FTSE high cap index lost 1.07% to 3,395.74 points, and the FTSEM mid cap index which closed at 2,261.59 points at -2.26%. On a weekly basis, the General Index which started the morning trading at +2.4% from Monday eventually ended the five-day session at +1.24%, while the banking sector went from gains of over 5% to eventually narrow to +3.23%.

National Bank limited losses to 1% with a close at €7.374 and a turnover of €11.7 million, while Piraeus slipped to €3.8 with a 3% dip on transactions worth 17.3 million euros, Eurobank with €9.9 million fell to 1.85 euros with -2.3% and Alpha with €6.5 million at €1.595 with -2.39%.

Special mention should however be made of the smaller Optima Bank, which not only escaped the liquidation grip but also continued with new gains at €9.79 (+0.6%) and a consistently high turnover of EUR 1 million.

The picture at General Index would have been worse without the +1.7% of the index heavy Coca Cola (turnover 316k) while some support was still provided by Jumbo with +0.53% at € 26.42 (6.7m), OPAP at €16.3 with +0.23% (2.3m), Sarantis with +0.9% at €11.2 (1.1m) and EVDAP with +1.25%.

Beyond that, however, PPC fell 3.2% to €11.63 (6.99 million), Quest plunged 4%, Viohalco closed down -3.2% and Ellaktor -3.5%.

In other sellers' picks based on turnover, OTE finished -0.62% (5.6m), TERNA Energy 0.6% (5.3m), GEK Terna also -0.6% (2m), Motor Oil -1.7% (1.9m), ELPE -1.8% (1.4m).

Mytilineos topped the turnover with 19m (with 8.1 in packages as mentioned above) which initially saw purchases up to €36.6 (+2.75%) but was dragged into the bearish sentiment and closed at €35.56 with -0.17%.

In the mid-cap sector, the only stock that survived was Kri Kri's +0.89% at €11.3 (EUR 171k) while Intrakat fell to €5.15 with -2.46% (EUR 1.35m) and Intralot at €1.084 with a 3.2% plunge  1.22m)