Real estate stocks drag TASE lower: Teva continues to slide after Deutsche Bank downgrades the share.

Jul 08, 2008 (Globes - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- DB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) is falling in morning trading today, dragged down by real estate and technology stocks. At mid-morning the Tel Aviv 25 index fell 2 percent to 1007 points, the Tel Aviv 100 index fell 2.3 percent to 908 points, the Tel-Tech fell 3.4 percent, and the Real Estate 15 index fell 4 percent.

The TASE is following yesterday's drops on Wall Street and today's losses in Asian markets.

Migdal Capital Markets noted yesterday that the Israeli economy was probably headed for a slowdown. "To the best of our understanding, the shekel at its current level will likely hurt exporters and business product, which will have a significant effect on growth," it said.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) fell 2 percent percent in morning trading on a negative arbitrage gap of 2 percent. Deutsche Bank yesterday downgraded its recommendation for the share to "Hold" after keeping its "Buy" recommendation for six and a half years, and cut the target price to $47.

All stocks on the Real Estate 15 index are down, including a 3.6 percent drop by Africa-Israel Investments Ltd. (TASE:AFIL; Pink Sheets:AFIVY) and a 4.4 percent drop by Gazit-Globe Ltd. (TASE: GLOB).

23 of the Tel Aviv 25 stocks are down, the exceptions being Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) and NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE).

13 of the 15 shares on the Tel-Tech are down, again with Cellcom and NICE as the exceptions. Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR) and Ceragon Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq: CRNT; TASE:CRNT) are both down 7 percent.

Dexia Israel (Public Finance) Ltd. (TASE:DXIL) is up 5.3 percent after announcing a NIS 250 million loan to Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22).

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