The Athens Stock Exchange was rocked by a banking sell-off that started Thursday on Wall Street and then spread to Asia and Europe as Greek bank shares fell more than 6%.

The European banking index posted its biggest daily drop since June 2022, while U.S. bank stocks experienced one of their biggest sell-offs in 25 years on Thursday.

The reason for the “holiday” investor climate internationally from which AX has not disappeared was the extraordinary capital increase that a regional US bank, Silicon Valley Bank, has stepped in to fund start-ups to cover losses in its investment portfolio, creating fear of contagion in the banking industry. the industry as a whole because of the losses they incurred on the bonds. Analysts, however, reassured, emphasizing that this is an idiosyncratic problem of the bank, and not a systemic one.

As for the AA statistics, the overall index closed down by 2.49% to 1056.26 points, and the turnover amounted to 114.1 million euros.

The general index yesterday closed down 2.49% to 1056.26 points.

The Large Cap Index closed down 2.85% at 2564.24, the Mid Cap Index closed down 1.39% at 1548.19 and the Banking Index sank 5.61% at 793.34.

Over the week, the general index fell by 5.24%, and the banking index by 13.57%.

After two and a half months of continuous growth and exceptional short-term gains across the entire market range, a more conservative change in investment strategy is expected to take place in view of the major developments expected in the near future. which in any case cannot be considered indifferent, comments Manos Hatsidakis from Beta Securities.

Thus, news such as GDP for 2022, the acquisition of Enel Romania and the excellent financial results of listed companies were only of short-term selective interest.