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CSE performance worse than Athex

06/04/2015 05:57
The CSE general index declined during the first quarter of 2015 by 6,8% performing worse than the Athex stock exchange whose general index dropped by 6,1%.

In fact this renders it as one of the worst performers among global stock exchanges and other asset classes.

The index dropped to 79,88 from its December 31, 2014 close of 85,70 mainly due to the negative returns of the two big banks.

Bank of Cyprus is down 5,6% since the beginning of the year as the price of its shares moved from €0,216 to €0,204, while Hellenic Bank by 7,1% from €2,10 to €1,95.

Of course Greek banks' performance was considerably poorer as evidenced by the Greek bank index which is down by 41,5% this year as all four systemic Greek banks suffered serious declines.

The fall in the exchange rate of EUR against all other major currencies gave a boost to stock exchanges of export-oriented economies.

As a result, the German DAX index and the French CAC index had some of the best performances with 22% and 17,8% respectively.

On the contrary the Swiss market managed just a 1,6% increase as the stronger Swiss franc is considered a negative development for Switzerland's economy.

Energy commodities were among the hardest hit as crude oil and natural gas lost 6,4% and 9,3% of their value respectively.