Banks: the real masters of the stock exchange. Quarterly report on stock exchange trends (2005)

The Italian stock exchange, like all the world’s main stock exchanges, is growing at a fast pace, and the increasing trend is prompting more than one company to apply for listing. Financial stocks all recorded a positive trend both compared to 2004 and in the 2002-2005 period, with exploits of over 100% for banks and real estate and an explosion in diversified financial stocks, which saw their quotations grow more than five times in three years. In particular, banks confirmed the upward trend in stock market quotation indices recorded between 2002 and 2005 (+105.14) even when compared with 2004 (+21.40) and the last four months (+8.13). From the data on the performance of the various sectors, it emerges that, among the industrial sectors, investors have rewarded chemical, electronic, plant and machinery, construction and, surprisingly, textile companies, while the food sector (as a result of Cirio and Parmalat) is negative over the four months (July-November 2005). The automotive sector posted a +3.43 over three years (2002-2005) and, after the disastrous fall in stocks in October 2002, recorded a significant increase of 28.95% in the last year. Less exciting, indeed rather disappointing, was the performance of the services sector, which had been holding up well and showing satisfactory increases in previous years, but has lost its attractiveness over the last year with values all falling over the last four months, and losses ranging from 4.4% in public services to 9.35% in transport.