As central banks and governments in the US and Europe took action to keep their economies afloat today, stock markets around the world rallied somewhat, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange among them. The Tel Aviv 35 Index rose 4.09% today, to 1,230.31 points; the Tel Aviv 125 Index rose 4.37%, to 1,161.80 points; and the BlueTech Global Index rose 1.82%, to 382.18 points. The TelBond 20 corporate bond index rose 3.28%, to points. Turnover totaled NIS 3.02 billion in equities, and NIS 7.39 billion in bonds.
For the week, the Tel Aviv 35 Index fell 1.7%. The index is down 26.9% for the year to date.
On the foreign exchange market, intervention by the Bank of Israel reversed the trend in the shekel. The representative shekel-dollar rate was set 3.76% lower, at NIS 3.6830/$, and the representative shekel-euro rate was set 5.20% lower, at NIS 3.9766/€.
The major banks, which have been battered over the past couple of weeks, corrected upwards strongly today. Bank Leumi was today's leading stock, and rose 10.09%, while Bank Hapoalim rose 6.12%. Amot rose 11.12%; Teva spoiled the picture among the leading stocks, falling 0.55%; and Nice Systems rose 4.24%.
Among prominent advancers today was BATM, which soared 36.45%, after it announced a collaboration with Israeli in-vitro rapid diagnostics company Novamed Ltd for the joint development and marketing of a Covid-19 rapid testing kit. Delek Group rose 20.43% today, and saw its share price triple this week, but is still down 68.78% for the year to date. Fattal, up 27.56%, and Navitas, up 21.14%, also staged recoveries from recent steep declines.
Among the decliners were Gilat, down 6.98%; Opko Health, down 6.68%; and Perrigo, down 4.19%.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 19, 2020
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020