Report From Tel Aviv: The Israeli Market Reacts to Violence (cont'd)

Note: The following is a detailed report on the Tel Aviv market session today from our partners at TheMarker.com:

Stocks trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange dived to close 8% down today on massive turnover of NIS 966 million.

The session began with relatively mild drops of about 2%. But when the news hit the floor at about 11:30 in the morning that Israeli soldiers had been lynched by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah, blue-chips immediately dived to a loss of more than 8%, leading the TASE to suspend trade in stocks and derivatives for 45 minutes. When trade resumed at 13:39, losses were slightly cut to about 7%. But they picked up again toward closing to end about 8% down.

It transpires that two Israeli soldiers were killed and two are in bad to hopeless condition. In midafternoon the Israeli Air Force bombed Palestinian headquarters in Ramallah and closed off the Palestinian territories, blocking movement between those areas and Israel. The Israel Defense Forces said that the attacks were a limited response to the deaths of the two soldiers. Earlier television news reports said that three soldiers had been murdered and one was in hopeless condition.

The Maof-25 index ended with a loss of 7.97% to 473.48 points. The TA-100 index dropped by 7.53% to 469.11 points. The Tel-Tech lost a slightly sharper 8.4%.

Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) opened with a positive arbitrage gap of 1%, and wound up losing 3.7% on humungous turnover of NIS 105 million. Turnover in Bezeq, the national phone company, was also huge. Bezeq shares lost 7.3% after NIS 103 million had changed hands.

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