Aug.10, 2012 | 5:19 AM–The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange finished the trading week down mildly, but for technology stocks yesterday was a kind of Black Thursday.

EZchip, a fabless chip maker specializing in Ethernet network processors, ended down 22% while TowerJazz, a semiconductor foundry, shed 12.5% and Magic Software, a maker of enterprise software, declined 6.7%. The TA BlueTech-50 index dropped 2% to 337.87 and the TA-Technology index an even steeper 2.3% to 351.34.

The TA-25 index of blue chips fell 0.3% to a closing of 1,107.26 while the TA-100 dropped 0.4% to 996.10. The TA-Banking index also lost 0.4% to end at 819.60, while the TA-Real Estate index fell 0.7% to 249.98.

For the week, the TA-25 rose 1%, doubling its (paltry ) year-to-date performance to 2%. The TA-100 rose 1.2%, bringing its year-to-date gain to 1.8%.

The bond market was also lower. The Tel-Bond indices were down as much as 0.3% as government bonds extended their downward movement of the last several days. In unlinked shekel bonds, prices were down 0.3% on average while inflation-indexed bonds saw drops of about 0.4%.

The day had begun relatively quietly, with little movement at all in stocks. What changed the atmosphere was the European Central Bank, which lowered its forecast for economic growth in the euro zone next year and conceded that the situation overall is worse than it had previous stated…Read More>>

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