By Hamza Hendawi
SHARES continued their spectacular run yesterday, notching up their fifth successive record close. The official all-share index rose by 1.80 per cent to close at 162.80 and bring to nearly 70 per cent total gains on the year.
The value of trade was a respectable £15.60 million, of which the unusually high sum of £4.01 million were spent on trading shares.
On a day when all seven-indices finished in positive territory, the blue- chips of the banks took £2.9 million of volume, while the “other companies” sector had £1.71 million.
The meteoric rise in share prices are prompting some traders to caution that a correction could be in the offing. This, they warn, might hurt investors who got in at relatively high levels.
“People must start to be a little careful with the market now,” was the advice of one trader.
Hellenic Bank, the island’s third largest financial institution, was the day’s biggest winner, rising by 31 cents to close at 4.91 pounds on the back of persistent rumours that the bank was the target of a takeover bid from Greece.
“We have not got a clue as to why the share is rising and there is no truth at all in the rumours,” a Hellenic Bank spokesman told the Cyprus Mail.
The share rose by 20 cents Friday and 18.50 cents the previous day.
The rumours have been making the rounds for weeks, surviving a categorical denial last month by the bank’s chief executive Panos Ghalanos.
“The market has a momentum and it seems to have an appetite for rumours like these,” said Adonis Yiangou of Expresstock. “I don’t think it is true myself that Hellenic is a target for a takeover.”
In the banks sector, only the Bank of Cyprus finished lower, at £6.80, while Popular Bank and Universal Savings finished up at £3.75 and £2.25 respectively.
Other big winners included shares of KEO, the Limassol-based beverages conglomerate. The stock rose by 20 cents to close at 1.68 pounds to help the manufacturing sub-index climb by an impressive 13.16 per cent to close at 99.31.
KEO, which holds its annual general meeting later this month, has returned to profit after several years in the red. Rumours in the market spoke of a rival beverages conglomerate buying up shares on the market en massein a bid to build up a stake in the brewery, wine and fruit juice makers. But a highly-placed source at KEO said the shares believed available for sale were too few to allow anyone to become a major shareholder. The Hellenic Mining Group Corporation owns about 55 per cent of KEO, according to the source, while the Bank of Cyprus and Hellenic Bank have 22 per cent and 8.5 per cent respectively.
In the trading sector, Nicos Shacolas’ Woolworth raked in 19 cents to close at £1.23 with 2.31 million shares changing hands. CTC, another Shacolas company, also finished higher at £2.17, up by 4.9 cents.
