The Athens Stock Exchange started the week with buyers dominating the market, which saw banks returning to their leading role and comfortably recovering the psychological milestone of 1,400 points, restoring contact with 13-year highs as concerns over the situation in the Middle East receded.

The market was boosted by the verdict of Standard & Poor's, which kept Greece's BBB- rating unchanged, the lowest level of the investment grade, but upgraded the outlook to positive from stable. It will be recalled that the agency gave Greece the investment grade on October 20, 2023.

Notably, the General Index moved steadily upwards and closed with a strong 1.99% gain at 1,420.4 points, essentially the highs of the day.

Trading activity was modest at €104.7 million of which 7.3 million in 17 packages (6 to Mytilineos for 3.9 million; 5 to Viocarpet for 822 thousand euros), with a trading volume of 23.6 million pieces.

The banking index led the rise with +2.99% to 1,214.98 points, the FTSE finished with a gain of 2.26% to 3,455.33 points, and the mid-cap FTSEM followed at a softer pace with +1.68% to 2,297.56 points.

Among the high-capitalization stocks, the biggest increase was recorded by Quest Symmetries (+5.66%), Eurobank (+4.69%), Aegean Airlines (+4.33%), Elvalhalkor (+3.05%), Piraeus (+2.94%), Ellaktor (+2.76%), Lamda Development (+2.61%) and Alpha Bank (+2.58%). On the contrary, only the share of Autohellas (-4.28%) declined.

In mid-cap Intralot (1.2 million) jumped 4% and Intracom, AVAX, Olympic Technical and Lavipharm closed with gains of more than 3%, while Intrakat (1.5 million) fell by 1.57% against the mood of the day.