TRADING in hotel stock dominated the market yesterday but the index still ended on a downward spiral, losing another 0.58 per cent to 226 points.
Opening slightly under Monday’s closing level the all-share index rose within minutes to an intraday high of 227 points before sliding back equally fast and remaining static for the rest of the session.
The FTSE/CySE top 20 index fell 0.9 per cent to 957 and volume, although higher than Monday, remained low at £9 million.
All sectors, except hotels, ended down with losses ranging from 0.10 for construction firms to 3.71 for financial services companies.
The hotel sector made big gains, clocking up 4.47 per cent due to interest in Lordos, Droushia and Leptos.
Lordos topped both the single gainer and most active lists yesterday, jumping 11 cents to 59 cents – a 24 per cent increase with a volume of £1.4 million pounds after 2.4 million shares changed hands.
Lordos’ stock has gained 54 per cent or 21 cents in the past week alone.
Leptos came in as second most active with 2.7 million shares traded, notching up four cents to close at 31 cents. Fifth-place Droushia added two cents to 28 cents after 1.5 million shares changed hands.
Laiki and Bank of Cyprus (BoC), the remaining two on the active list, both sustained marginal losses. Laiki dropped two cents to £2.69 while BoC shed three cents to £3.10.
Elsewhere, GlobalSoft ended nine cents poorer at £4.20 and takeover target Kyknos slid another one cent to 90 cents as the battle moved away from the market into the legal arena.
Because of the continued low volume together with the daily slide of the index, traders say, things are not likely to improve any time soon.
“The index is now a long way from what we thought would be the 240-point stabilisation level,” one analyst said.
“It’s sliding slowly but surely, bit by bit, day by day, and investors do not seem at all keen to jump in at this point.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
