The sale of all of an unidentified party's stocks covered by the Tel Aviv-25 Index of highest-capitalization companies has been cited for the 45-minute suspension of trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange shortly before the regularly scheduled closing on Thursday afternoon. The 35.5-million-shekel deal pushed the major indexes more than 10 percent into the minus column, activating the suspension.

If the losses had reached 12 percent, the market would have been closed for the day, but losses were minimized when trading resumed, with the TA-25 closing down only 4.9 percent. The Tel Aviv-100 Index declined 5.33 percent, while the Tel-Tech fell 9.06 percent.