CAIRO: The Egyptian stock market rose on Monday as non-Arab foreigners started buying again, focusing on big cap companies with London listings, brokers said. The foreigners were net buyers by a margin of LE 20 million ($3.6 million), in low turnover of LE 560 million, according to stock market data. Arab investors were net sellers by about the same margin. The brokers said most of the interest was in Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), Orascom Telecom (OT) and Commercial International Bank (CIB). OCI last traded 5.09 percent up at LE 123.36 and OT rose 3.18 percent to 27.90. CIB gained 5.1 percent to last trade at LE 34.39. OCI and OT are heavily weighted in most indexes. OCI also rose on news of its continuing share buyback, as did appliance maker Olympic Group, which jumped 17.46 percent to end at LE 23.48. A lot of buying in OCI and CIB gave a positive direction. It won t be a rally any time soon but confidence is returning, said Teymour El-Derini of the brokerage Beltone. Yasser Hassanein of Dynamic Securities said that foreign funds which wanted to sell Egyptian stocks had mostly finished selling, easing the selling pressure on the market. People expect that with the beginning of new year things should look up, especially as the central bank is expected to knock 50 basis points off interest rates, he added. The benchmark CASE 30 index ended up 1.5 percent at 4,366.68 points, while the rival Hermes index gained 0.71 percent to 405.99 points. The broader CIBC index added 0.93 percent to 282.4 points.
