The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) fell today. The Tel Aviv 25 Index fell 0.82% to 1,239.09 points, the Tel Aviv 100 Index fell 0.76% to 1,104.14 points, and the BlueTech 50 Index fell 1.35% to 308.80 points. Turnover was NIS 1.22 billion.
The TASE lost ground today, in line with falls on European markets and at the opening on Wall Street. The Tel Aviv 25 Index fell 0.1%, on the week, after rising 1.1% last week.
In the foreign currency market, the Bank of Israel set the shekel-dollar representative exchange rate at NIS 3.676/$, down 0.109% on yesterday's rate, and set the shekel-euro representative exchange rate at NIS 4.752/€, up 0.042%.
In the bond market, long-term Shahar unlinked shekel government bonds were unchanged while long term Galil CPI-linked government bonds rose by up to 0.2%. The corporate bond benchmark Tel-Bond 20 Index fell 0.14%.
In the stock market, the TASE was led into negative territory by dual trade technology stocks EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. (Nasdaq: EZCH; TASE:EZCH) and Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:MLNX; TASE:MLNX), which fell 3.6% and 3.4% respectively.
The banks were a major focus of attention today as Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI) and Bank Hapoalim (TASE: POLI) published their fourth quarter and full-year 2012 financials. Hapoalim saw annual net profits fall 7% to NIS 2.5 billion while Leumi saw annual net profit halved to NIS 931 million. Leumi's share fell 3.2% on the day's biggest trading turnover of 3.2% and Hapoalim fell 0.9%.
Israel Corporation (TASE: ILCO) fell 1.4% after reporting a loss of $146 million compared with a net profit of $155 million in 2011.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 21, 2013
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