Prague market traded higher yesterday, rising 0.88%, elevating the PX-50 index to 501.80 points. The market was clearly led by expectations of a US key rate cut (announced later in the evening, local time) and, therefore, selling in size was a rare event. Cesky Telecom added 1.10% to CZK 525.50 on a good volume of more than 561,800 shares. Ceske radiokomunikace added 3.14% after the company announced it would pay two-thirds of its year-2000 profits in dividends this year. This pushed the stock up to CZK 1,348. Other stocks traded in a low volume. CEZ's volume again did not exceed 1 mil. shares. For today, given the Nasdaq slide yesterday, we expect a soft opening in Cesky Telecom; for Komercni banka, we expect the stock to trade again at CZK 1,010-1,020 levels, whereas the bid side seems to be restlessly strong. Total market volume reached USD 16.26 mil. on Wednesday.
(Milan Procházka)