GREEK STOCK MARKET

GREEK STOCK MARKET

AXON Securities is your most reliable partner to invest in the Greek equity and derivatives market. Fully committed to your investment agenda and with unparalleled professionalism, we undertake to carry out your instructions, always in accordance with the guidelines and objectives you have set. Our fully equipped team will ensure that your transactions are executed immediately and inform you of their outcome.

At AXON Securities we provide the following investment products in the Greek Stock Exchange:

  • Purchase and Sale of Shares on the Athens Exchange
  • Index Futures on indices of the Athens Exchange
  • Stock Futures on shares of the Athens Exchange
  • Index Options on Athens Exchange indices
  • Stock Options on shares of the Athens Exchange
  • Securities lending products (Stock Repo, Stock Reverse Repo)
  • Ability to create a Joint Investor Account

You can read more details about the Greek Stock Exchange market in the following sections:

Investors who buy shares in listed companies automatically become shareholders of those companies. The shareholders of the Listed Companies expect to benefit:

(a) the possible rise in the prices of the shares they hold on the regulated markets on which they are traded.

(b) the possible decision of the companies in which they are shareholders to distribute dividends.

The holders of shares acquire voting rights in the General Meetings of the companies corresponding to the number of shares they hold.

The rights granted by the Listed Companies to their shareholders are cancelled in case the investors have sold and closed their entire position in the Listed Company.

Listed companies are categorised according to their capitalisation and based on the limits set by the Supervisory Authority of each regulated market.

In the Athens Stock Exchange there are 3 categories:

  • Shares belonging to the High Capitalisation category
  • Shares belonging to the Medium Capitalisation category
  • Shares belonging to the Low Capitalisation category

A high market capitalisation of a company is usually associated with an increase in the marketability of its shares. This is of course not absolute because there are several cases of mid and small cap stocks with high marketability.

In addition to the basic classification according to their capitalization, the shares of Listed Companies are also classified by sector of activity. Highly marketable stocks participate in the composition of indices that track the performance of individual categories. The main indices of the stock exchange are the FTSE 20 index representing high-capitalisation companies, the FTSE 40 index representing mid-capitalisation companies and the FTSE 80 index representing low-capitalisation companies.

Usually, the price fluctuation of a share of a high-cap company has less chance of extreme deviations compared to the share of a mid- or low-cap company.

The Athens Exchange has other categories independent of the capitalization criterion such as (a) the Special Stock Market Characteristics category, and (b) the category of Shares under Surveillance. These categories include shares that exhibit changes in the nature of their activities or significant changes in their financial data or a combination of both. Also, a share of a Listed Company may be included in one of the two categories due to low marketability or low dispersion of shares among the investing public.

Another category of listed shares is the so-called preferred shares. One of the advantages of such shares is that in case of bankruptcy of the listed company, the holder of the preference share has priority in the payment of money over the holder of the ordinary share.

Inclusion or exclusion in the above categories is decided by the competent supervisory authority and is subject to change following the evaluation and review of new data, always with a view to protecting the investing public.

Large-cap stocks are traded throughout the session, small-cap stocks are traded from (10:30 – 12:00) and from (14:00-16:30) with intermediate concentration of orders. Shares belonging to the Special Characteristics and the Supervised category are traded at a specific time (currently 12:30-13:30).

It should be noted that, in addition to the traditional investment tactic followed by the majority of investors, i.e. buying shares and holding them until they appreciate, there is the possibility for the investor to benefit from the fall in the prices of financial instruments. This strategy is known as short selling.

Specifically, in the Greek market, in order to short sell, the investor can borrow the shares (since they are in the ADECH’s pool) with interest from the derivatives market and sell them in the spot market (equity market). For this process, there must be a pre-existing account in both the spot and the derivatives market.

On the other hand, if someone intends to hold his shares for a long time, he can lend them to the ADECH, earning interest on them, separately for each security.

Investors buy and sell shares and other financial products. In order to be admitted to a regulated market, orders must meet criteria that allow them to be accepted by dedicated trading systems.

First, the investor should provide an order with the mandatory fields listed below:

(a) a buying or selling position

(b) movable value

(c) pieces

(d) price

(e) customer account

There are the following types of commands :

  • Limit order-rest of day, which describes the exact time, quantity and price of the security, and lasts until the end of the session.
  • Good till cancel where the order is valid until it is cancelled.
  • Good till date where the order is valid until the specified date. When the date has passed, the order is automatically cancelled.
  • Free Order (market Order) where the order describes the desired quantity, but not the price. This order is drawn at whatever price is available at that time. If the order is not completed for the entire quantity, the unexecuted quantity becomes an order with a limit at the lowest price of the unexecuted pieces. If the order is entered pre-order and remains unexecuted, at the opening, the remaining quantity is converted into a limit order with the opening price of the stock.
  • At the Open Order where the order describes the desired quantity, but the desired price is the starting trading price of the security. If there is no quantity available at the opening, the remaining order becomes a limit order with a price equal to the opening price.
  • At the Close Order where the order describes the desired quantity but sets the desired price as the closing price of the security. If there is an unexecuted quantity, then the order remains as a limit order at the closing price until the end of the session.
  • Conditional order means the additional element of the order beyond the price and pieces, which must be accepted by the system in order to establish a transaction. In particular :
    • STOP: This is a buy or sell order, limit or free, which is accompanied by a trigger condition. An example of such an order is a Free or Limit order to buy or sell a particular stock, when the price of a particular stock market index reaches the STOP price but there is no guarantee that it will be executed.
    • Immediate Or Cancel – IOC refers to a conditional instruction that is executed immediately if the criteria of the instruction value are met. In case of an outstanding amount, the order is cancelled.
    • Fill Or Kill – FOK refers to an immediate execution order if the price criteria and the order pieces are met and can be executed in full, otherwise the order is canceled.
    • All Or None (AON) is the condition which specifies that the command remains active until executed in its entirety by an opposing command.
    • Multiples Of – MO means the condition which specifies that the order remains active and is executed provided that it is executed in multiples of a certain number of pieces, which must necessarily be (a) less than the total number of pieces for which the participant has received a buy or sell order and (b) an integer divisor of the total number of pieces
    • Minimum Fill (MF) is the condition that specifies that the order remains active and is executed provided that a minimum and specific number of fragments are executed, which is declared and must necessarily be less than the total number of fragments in the order. In case the number of remaining pieces is less than the minimum size then the minimum size of the original order is automatically changed to equal the remaining number of pieces.

The most appropriate investment tactic is the one that ensures the greatest possible diversification of the investment portfolio, i.e. investing in many more than one financial instrument, in more than one regulated market, currency and sector. By way of illustration, a properly diversified investment portfolio includes cash, money market instruments, bonds, equities, mutual fund shares, derivative products and others. More specifically, the securities in the portfolio should belong to different sectors and be traded on regulated markets in different countries and in different currencies, e.g. securities of the stock exchange of the stock exchange of the rest of Western Europe (euro), securities of the stock exchange of the United States (dollars). In this way, the systematic and non-systematic risk of the portfolio in question is minimised as far as possible.