Galery

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Today the Athens Stock Exchange opened with significant losses due to the mass sales that had started only a few hours after the outcome of Sunday's election had become known.

In particular, at 11:05 am, the main index dropped by 3.95% to 807.25% while turnover amounted to 35 million euro. The FTSE25 index reported a 5.26% loss to 252.67 percentage points, whereas the banking index lost 8.90% thus amounting to 87.46%.

The atmosphere is not reminiscent of last Friday’s, when the Greek market had reported an impressive 6.14% increase.

However, as noted by local analysts, this is not because the market did not expect SYRIZA to win in the elections. In their opinion, the developments on the bond market seem to be playing an important role in today's investor behaviour, as yields have significantly increased, including new risk premiums for investors.

Greece's ability to refinance its debt and to keep the budget within the fiscal targets will become clear in the coming days and the Greek Stock Exchange will adjust its course accordingly, remaining a high risk market, but also a market with very attractive valuations.

The shares of Piraeus Bank on the Athens Stock Exchange tumbled by 11.43% to 0.86 euro, those of Eurobank by 8.09% to 0.1590 euro, of Alpha Bank by 7.73%, of Folli Follie by 7.61%, and of the National Bank by 7.53%. The telecommunications company OTE and the State Lottery OPAP reported losses of more than 6% whereas MIG, Jumbo and Hellenic Petroleum lost more than 3%.

Increase in yields on 10-year bonds

Meanwhile, the yield on Greek government bonds is reporting a significant increase following yesterday's victory of SYRIZA. In particular, the yield on 10-year bonds has increased by 23 basis points to 8.733%.

SYRIZA’s promises to end the austerity in Greece and to renegotiate the terms of the memorandum with the lenders are of concern to the international markets, which fear a new crisis in the euro zone.

"The vote against the austerity policy was popular but perhaps it will make no difference because in practice Greece does not have many options: it must either fulfil the commitments made to the supervisory Troika, or leave the euro zone. I doubt that the latter will happen because the Greeks are really tired of the continuous restrictions but not of the status of Europeans," said a leading economist at Saxo Bank.

To be continued.