CAIRO: Egyptian real estate stocks made strong gains on Wednesday, recovering some of their heavy recent losses, but the benchmark CASE 30 stock index ended the day 2.7 percent down in line with international markets. Medinet Nasr Housing gained 4.6 percent to LE 26.02 ($4.67), Heliopolis Housing rose 10.3 percent to LE 26 and Palm Hills Development ended 12.2 percent higher at LE 11.97. That s because real estate is the sector that has dropped the most, said Yasser Hassanein of Dynamic Securities. One week ago Medinet Nasr hit a year-low of LE 18.32, down from LE 82.45 in the middle of April. Real estate has been really undervalued, added Teymour El-Derini, a trader at Beltone Financial. The CASE 30 fell more than 3 percent in the first 10 minutes of trading and then hovered between 2.5 and 3 percent down for the rest of the session. Brokers said the market leader was Orascom Construction Industries, one of the Egyptian stocks linked to international markets through its GDRs. The stock ended the day 0.3 percent down at LE 259.90. But the biggest factor was the performance of foreign markets, especially the US market on Tuesday. A lot of people are looking at what happens in the United States and Europe and then taking the signal from there, which is ridiculous, because in Egypt you don t have all the problems of the credit crunch, said Derini. The well-watched Hermes index lost 1.98 percent to 533.25, while the broader CIBC index slipped 1.85 percent to 306.52 points.
