After the Christmas madness, a breather

The end of the year and the first days of January were marked by a relatively good mood on the stock exchange, as the indexes sluggishly hauled themselves back up. Even though the jitteriness of investors had calmed, it was hard to expect a bigger injection of optimism. However, the situation on the interbank market clearly revealed a growth in mutual distrust, in spite of help from the European Central Bank, lending EUR 450 bln to the banks, who immediately deposited the money in the central bank. Nonetheless, the structural problems of the eurozone - the catalyst of all the recent stock exchange decreases - remain unsolved. The January effect (the first month is statistically one of the best periods on the stock exchanges) definitely gave the trading floors a lift. By the middle of January, the stock exchanges had grown moderately, though it was difficult to identify the factors behind this development. The troubled eurozone, worries about UK debt and the recurring problems with the