Tel Aviv shares drop as fighting enters 2nd week

Tel Aviv shares drop as Israel enters the second week of fighting following the murderous assault on its border communities launched by Hamas terrorists, and with the Israel Defense Forces gearing up for a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

The TA-35 stock index of blue-chip companies falls almost 3 percent, the benchmark TA-125 index falls 3.2% and the TA-90 index, which tracks the shares with the highest capitalization not included in the TA-35 index, sinks 4% in early afternoon trading.

The TA-Bank index of the five largest banks slips 3.3% and construction, building and gas stocks decline around 4%.

Since the devastating onset of the war with Hamas, in which 1,300 were killed in Israel, some 1,000 of them civilians, and 150-200 kidnapped by terrorists, the shekel has dropped 2.6% against the US dollar trading around 3.97 per dollar, the weakest level since February 2016. The foreign exchange market is closed on Sunday and will fully reopen on Monday.