The Czech PX-50 index rose marginally (+0.1%), to 397.60 points on Thursday, despite strong gains on major European and US bourses. Ceske radio and Unipetrol both traded down. Ceske radio traded below CZK 400—the intra-day low was CZK 388—though there is domestic demand below this level. Unipetrol closed down at CZK 51.10 after a local broker continued to aggressively sell the stock. Komercni banka still has its natural buyer, but, once again, strong foreign as well as domestic selling eventually pushed the stock to an intra-day low of CZK 927.30. The overall market volume was low at USD 11.9 mil. For today we expect the PX-50 index to return above the 400 level, pulled by stocks like Cesky Telecom. We would not be surprised to see more stop-losses in Komercni, though.
(Milan Procházka)