by Alexia Sotiriou

The Athens Stock Exchange is entering one of the most critical months of the year.

Investors, gifted with an average return of 10% in the first eight months of 2024, are looking to the multiple and significant developments of the coming weeks, which will largely determine the short-medium term market trend.

September’s reputation may not be the best – the 9th month period from 2000 to 2023 is consistently down – but there are reasonable expectations that trading activity and daily turnover will start to pick up again, leaving behind the recent stagnation.

The first bet, of course, is to exceed the minimum target of 100 million euros/day, which is a condition to finally “break” the narrow range of variation of the previous two weeks (1,425 to 1,437 points).

“The image of inactivity is not sustainable and may be reversed with the return of investors in September. In any case, convincing investment initiatives, fresh money and positive news will be required to support the market,” Petros Steriotis, a certified technical analyst, said.

The milestones of September

The stock market will start to become more and more interesting in the coming days. Apart from the financial results of listed companies for the first half of the year, which continue to confirm the positive trends for this year’s profitability, attention is focused on the ‘verdicts’ of the rating agencies.

The DBRS report on Friday may not be a particularly critical catalyst (given that the Canadian company has already upgraded Greece to investment grade), but the same is not true of the Moody’s report, which is the only one of “big” and recognized agencies which still classifies Greek bonds in a non-investment category.

The Athens Stock Exchange hopes that this will change on September 13, when it will release its report, which is currently one notch below investment grade. The importance of this rating is enormous, as Moody’s is proven to be the one with the greatest weight in passive funds. Therefore, a potential upgrade is expected to bring large inflows into government bonds, providing a significant psychological boost to the stock market.

Another important milestone is National Bank and the 18.39% share that the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund still owns.

At the same time, the average turnover of Greek businesses that received services from the Enterprise Europe Network Hellas consortium increased by 35.5%, according to the survey on the quality of services of the Enterprise Europe Network in the period 2023-2024.

The research is conducted with an electronic questionnaire completed by businesses from all over the world that receive services from the Enterprise Europe Network, with PRAXI Network as the coordinator of the Greek network Enterprise Europe Network-Hellas.

“We are proud of the excellent results achieved by the Greek consortium of the Enterprise Europe Network in 2023-2024”, the coordinator of the consortium Dr. Achilleas Barlas stated and added: “Businesses reward the consortium, with their kind words, as nine out of ten declare that we respond exceptionally well to their needs.

In addition, the fact that our services have contributed to an increase in their turnover by 35.5% on average, confirms the quality of our work. We are committed to continuing to provide high quality services, adapted to the evolving needs of businesses.”

Small and medium-sized enterprises with innovation and extroversion potential are developed internationally with the support of the Enterprise Europe Network.

According to the survey:

-Nine out of 10 Enterprise Europe Network clients in Greece state that the Enterprise Europe Network meets their needs extremely well or very well.

-Nine out of 10 also consider it very likely that they would recommend the Enterprise Europe Network to other businesses or work with the Network again in the future themselves.

-Eight out of 10 businesses describe the Network’s services as high quality and tailored to their requirements.

From the available data, it appears that the Greek companies that received services from the Enterprise Europe Network Hellas consortium managed to increase their turnover by an average of 35.5%.