The President of the Capital Market Commission (CMC), Mr Pilavios announced that new measures will be introduced in order to protect the investors and lead to further development of the Hellenic Stock Market.
Those measure include a change in the fluctuation limits on stocks as of January 1st 2005, eradication of the fluctuation limit for the stocks of FTSE/ASE 20 and for all other stocks, the upper and lower fluctuation limits are increased from +18% to +20%. Thus, when the security has reached +10% and has remained there for 15 minutes, the volatility limit is uplifted to +20%.
The rationale behind this, as stated by Pilavios, rests with the fact that the daily fluctuation limits do not allow stocks’ prices to comply with the supply and demand forces. Additionally, as the shares composing the FTSE/ASE 20 have the biggest spread and are the ones most negotiable in the market, the high volatility is a rare phenomenon in this index.
Pilavios together with Mr Kapralos, President of the ATHEX, announced that in 2005 the legal framework will be in place for the Hedge Funds. Additionally, the introduction of a new market -within the already existing- that will include high-risk stocks is in the HELEX short term future plans. According to Mr Kapralos, this new market will provide economic incentives to issuing companies, traders as well as investors. Further information will be released upon announcement.
Finally, there are on going discussions for the creation of a new common trading platform for Greece Romania, Bulgaria, FYROM and Cyprus. However, it is still under examination if this will also include exchange of equity holdings.