Despite the current political crisis and the ongoing protests, the stock market’s benchmark index EGX 30 moved up 213 points to close the session at 5,052 points, Sunday.
Among the traded stocks, 127 achieved gains, while 19 suffered losses, the market authority suspended the trade on 60 stocks after they rose beyond the limit of five per cent.
On whether this was a breakthrough in the market, Ossama Morad, CEO at Arab Finance Brokerage said “we hope so, even if we can’t explain this boost, there are no understandable reasons,” he talked about some inside information that some people may have used to mislead investors, he called upon the stock market authority to monitor all the operations that happened in the last two weeks.
Morad denied any relation between what happened in the market Sunday and the political dialogue that took place the day before, “this was a monologue,” he said, “a dialogue should be between two parties.”
“If the people who met yesterday had any popular influence, how come we still see so many protestors in the street?”
The National Front for the Salvation of the Revolution was not included in the negotiations.
On the losses that the stock market suffered over the last two weeks, Morad said “there are no technical reasons for the bad performance of the market, it can all be explained by the political atmosphere, the lack of transparency and clear vision.” To get out of this crisis, the expert said “Egypt is a big country and can’t rise without the efforts of all its children, there’s no single party that can handle the responsibility on his own, and we have to stand together.”
On the yet-to-be-launched FTSE Pan African Index, the analyst said this is merely a formality and has no effect on the market, he explained:”the African countries don’t have a considerable weight in the investment markets.”
Hisham Tawfik, chairman of Arabia Online Brokerage said he was astonished by the performance of the market, “this is the second times this happens, with no justification, all the news is bad.”
For Tawfik the political dialogue that took place on Saturday was not enough to explain the rise in the market.
“To get out of the crisis two things need to be done” he said, the first is to reconcile the split that divides society, and the second is for the government to produce a clear economic plan.
