By Michael Ioannou
THE CYPRUS Stock Market ended broadly stable yesterday, with strong gains in tourism stocks, but a weaker performance from blue chips snipping at the general index, which closed 0.4 per cent firmer.
Prices lost ground after a strong opening of 646.02 points to close at 644.4. The value of transactions was marginally up from Thursday at £21.9 million on 4,329 trades.
Yesterday’s closing brought cumulative gains of the bourse this week to 0.2 per cent in what has generally been seen as a consolidation period with major swings in prices rare.
Tourism shares took centre stage yesterday as the sector climbed 2.14 per cent. Leptos Calypso topped the volume ranks with a £1.6 million turnover, jumping 22 cents to £1.70.
But nobody could say why investors were snapping up the stock.
“There is no particular news concerning that company at the moment,” one trader said.
There were smaller advances in the industry and insurance sectors while investment, commercial, banking and companies in the “other” category showed declines.
Bank of Cyprus shares ended unchanged at £9.79 on a volume of 235,194 shares, Popular Bank were marginally higher by a cent at £13.48 on a volume of 88,870, and Hellenic Bank were off five cents to £4.61 after a tumultuous start to the week.
“The market is mostly quiet and it is directionless,” said Calliope Toumbouris of CLR Stockbrokers.
Toumbouris said that many investors had started to do intraday deals, getting in one day and exiting the next in companies where paperless trading had been initiated.
“I see the new companies entering the market doing well and old ones left behind,” she said, adding that was the result of a feeling among some investors that new entrants to the bourse were cheaper than others.
An analyst at one brokerage said small investors were not being very active and some were locked in at high prices, having bought when the market was at its peak at the end of November. “They don’t want to sell because they will lose money… they obviously don’t know the rule of cutting your losses short,” the analyst said. Traders say the market was continuing to wobble from a cash drain by investors chasing cheaper initial public offerings. Estimates of money removed from the market from end-November to date range from £500 million to a billion pounds.
There were signs however, that some of the money was trickling back to the bourse; block trades in Louis Cruise Lines were an indication that some of the public investment companies were starting to distribute some of their cash pile, a trader said.
LCL ended the day unchanged at £2.82 on a volume of 530,749 shares. Universal Life, which has added more than three pounds this week, climbed another 74 cents to £4.99.
Speculative buying was driving the stock up as a deadline expires on Monday for brokers Severis and Athienitis Financial Services (SAFS) formally to make a bid to take an equity stake in the insurer.
AFS announced their intention of making a bid for between 20 and 100 per cent of Universal on January 11.
The firm, controlled in part by the Cyprus Popular Bank and Bank of Cyprus, is obliged to disperse its capital by the end of the month, or face de- listing by the exchange.
