Egypt's bourse failed to gain momentum Sunday and continued its slide for the six day running led by drops in major shares. The bourse's main indicator, EGX30, dropped 0.89 per cent to reach 4,325 points, its lowest level since early 2009. The broader index, EGX70 witnessed a sharper decline of 1.12 per cent. EGX30 opened the 4 hour trading session in the green and continued rising for about 45 minutes when it began losing points and turned red at around noon. "The market was going up as some traders thought the indicator has reached a support point but there wasn't enough buying pressure to carry it upwards," says Ashraf Abdel Aziz, institution sales head in Arabeya Online Securities. Trading on Ezz Steel was resumed at around 1 o'clock after it has been suspended since Thursday's session, on back of a court verdict sentencing its former chairman Ahmed Ezz to 10 years in jail on graft charges and levying a $111 million fine. The court also ruled to withdraw four new factory licenses from steel manufactures including Ezz Steel, Beshay Steel and Suez Steel. Ezz Steel shares dropped 10 per cent to reach LE7.03 pulling EGX30 further downwards. The largest steel manufacturer in Egypt said in a statement on Sunday that the ruling would not impact current operations but was expected to hit future investments. It added it was considering legal options to confront any impact from the ruling. Total market turnover reached a low of EGP193 million. Egyptian investors made up 80.42 per cent of total trading and Arab investors 4.39 per cent. A Treasury Stocks Deal amounting LE18 million was carried out by Sixth of October Development & Investmentcompany (SODIC), slightly boosting market turnover. Foreign investors contributed 15.20 per cent to total trading, higher than their recent usual Sunday contribution. Abdel Aziz explains the foreigners' market share could be attributed to either high trading on Commercial International Bank (CIB) shares, which is favoured by foreigners or the SODIC treasury stocks. Egyptians were net buyers hitting the LE7.7 million mark while both foreigners and Arabs were net sellers. News about ex-tourism minister Zuhair Garranah's extra 3 year jail sentence did not help to alleviate investors' negative sentiment according to El-Naerm Holding research unit. The unit said the news led to the decline of some leading stocks, such as Palm Hills Development, which plunged 5.19 per cent and recorded a new 52 week low. Three shares contributed to around 23 per cent of total trading which were CIB, Citadel Capital and Orascom Telecom gaining 1.47 per cent, 1.06 per cent and 1.26 per cent respectively. CIB, Egypt's largest listed private bank, made an announcement that it does have any exposure with any of the three steel companies that have seen their new factory licenses withdrawn. Other leading stocks such as Orascom Construction, Telecom Egypt and Mobinil dropped 1.25 per cent, 1.16 per cent and 3.85 per cent respectively. Out of 176 traded shares today, 43 gained while 127 finished in red.
