The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) was down sharply today. In the wake of the US stock markets, which fell on Friday, despite passage by the US House of Representatives of the $700 billion bailout package, the TASE recorded across the board steep falls.
The Tel Aviv 25 Index fell 6.3% to 794, while the Tel Aviv 100 Index dropped 6.6% to 707, and the Tel Tech Index posted a steep loss of 11.49%. The Real Estate 15 Index was off 11.04%.
Prior to the open, the TASE was set to drop about 2.6%, and the "English Opening" system adopted by the TASE delayed trading for several minutes to allow traders an opportunity to sort out order imbalances. The theoretical drop at the open was not steep enough to trigger "circuit breaker" rules which would have delayed trading by 45 minutes.
99 of the 100 stocks in the Tel Aviv 100 Index were down, with only Bezeq (up 1.84%) bucking the trend.
Delek Automotive Systems Ltd. (TASE: DLEA) was off 4.07%, despite a positive review by Merrill Lynch before the weekend, which reiterated its "Buy" recommendation on the shares.
Shares in NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) was down 9.3%, following a steep drop on Thursday as well of 10.25%. This is despite NICE unit Actimize reporting a MasterCard deal last week, and NICE announcing that Gartner research firm has placed it in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner's September 2008 Magic Quadrant for workforce optimization report. Gartner defines leaders as those companies that "provide functionally broad and deep WFO software portfolios that can be deployed and supported globally."
Soothing words about the positive state of Israel's economy by Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On and former Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to halt the slide.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 5, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008