Brokers Jubilant As Stocks Rebound

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Brokers Jubilant As Stocks Rebound
 
by Gil Ronen

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange

(IsraelNN.com) The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange closed Sunday with sharp gains in what is seen as a direct response to signs of a recovery in Wall Street Thursday.

 The Tel Aviv Index rose 3.44% to 1,027.38 points; the Tel Aviv 100 climbed 4.16% to 949.37 points; the Tel-Tech went up 5.25% to 238.25 points and the Real Estate Index leapt by 12.76% to 471.78 points.

Overall trade volume reached NIS 1.6 billion, in a day of trading that ended earlier than usual due to a partial strike by Stock Exchange employees.

Dollar up
The US dollar strengthened Sunday morning, with the shekel exchange rate reaching NIS 3.441 to the dollar.

The news comes in the wake of an announcement by the Bank of Israel last Thursday that it woul
The Real Estate Index leapt by 12.76% to 471.78 points.
d buy $25 million per day for the next two years, starting Monday. In total, the Bank will have bought $10 billion in two years' time.

The Tel Aviv indexes were reacting to a spike in Wall Street Thursday, before U.S. and European exchanged closed up for the Easter holiday. On Thursday, the Dow Jones index rose by 2.16% to a level of 12,361.32 points, with a rise of 1.9% for the whole week; the NASDAC rose 2.18% to 2,258.11 points, up 3% in the course of the week and the S&P 500 climbed 2.39% to 1,329.51 points, also gaining 3% from the beginning of the week.

In Israel, some local stocks also did well: Aloni-Hetz shot up 17.2% after its financial reports showed a 19% rise in income in 2007, but a 10% decline in net profits, which to
The US dollar strengthened Sunday morning, with the shekel exchange rate reaching NIS 3.441 to the dollar.
taled NIS 366.5 million. Discount Investments showed a 50% erosion in fourth-quarter profits but a doubling of the annual profit to NIS 1.5 billion. Its stock rose 2.3% Sunday.

Interest rate cut Monday
Another reason for optimism in Tel Aviv is the expectation that the Bank of Israel will announce a lowering of the interest rate in a news conference it will hold Monday afternoon. Most experts estimated that the interest rate, which is currently at 3.75%, will be cut by 0.25% but some expected the cut to reach 0.5%.

The move follows a sharp interest rate cut in the U.S. last week and the ongoing weakening of the dollar vis-à-vis the shekel. The Bank of Israel wants to enlarge economic activity and prevent a slowdown, but does not want to cut the interest rate too much, for fear of an inflationary outbreak