Weekly Review October 18-22, 2009

Trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) during the third week of October was characterized by high Volatility. The increases on share prices that characterized the last few weeks continued until mid-week, and then started to decline.

 

The TA-25 index remained without change during the week, after a relatively high year-to-date return of 59%. The TA-75 that also didn't changed this week, continues to shine with a cumulative 134% rate of return since the beginning of the year, which can be attributed to the sharp increase in prices earlier in the year of shares involved in the discovery of gas in two sites off Israel’s Mediterranean shore.

 

The large real estate companies share prices raised 1.5% this week, while prices of the financial institutions and hi-tech companies declined 1.5 %.

 

 

"Bank Discount" raised US $165 million in a public bond issue this week. Banking institutions continue to dominate the primary bond market, with a total of US $2.8 billion raised since the beginning of the year, approximately 40% of all bond issues by the private sector.

 

The Israeli treasury raised an additional US $260 million this week in local government bond issues. The government raised about US $14.8 billion since the beginning of the year, slightly higher than the amount raised in the entire year of 2008.

 

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics released figures indicating that unemployment rate continues to decline - 7.6% in August compared with 7.9% in April-May 2009.