The Egyptian exchange (EGX) witnessed an increase during the past week's session and traders are suggesting it will continue its rise during this week with the support of the Commercial International Bank's (CIB) shares, accounting for 40% of the market's trading in the last week's closing session to lead the EGX to the green zone. The benchmark index EGX30 closed at 3.58% high during last week, scoring 13,837.19 points, and the index of small and medium companies EGX70 rose 1.7% to settle at 529 points. The broader EGX100 index rose by 2.93% to 1,393 points, while the EGX30 capped increased by 3.03% closing at 16,262 points. To illustrate, the Managing Director of Solidere Securities Brokerage, Ahmed El-Rawy, expected the uptrend will continue during this week's sessions, with the main index likely to reach 14,350-14,500 points moving above the secondary resistance level at 14,000. He pointed out that the EGX30 closed at 13,837 points to earn 43.2 points in transactions of EGP 872m, an increase over the average trading, noting that the CIB shares were the most active in terms of trading value with transactions of EGP 372m. In addition, the total value of trading on the EGX reached EGP 7.9bn last week, while the volume of traded securities amounted to about 552m, executed through 87,000 transactions. During the week before last, the total trading value was EGP 9.9bn, involving 884m shares traded through 77,000 transactions. El-Rawy added that the growth of purchasing power continued to appear clearly in the CIB shares, as the main index rises above the support area of 13,300-13,400 points, which is a positive sign in addition to surpassing its temporary resistance area around 13,520 points, and also exceeding the 13,700-13,750 levels. He pointed out that the heavyweight CIB share witnessed an increase in the last week's trading from EGP 77 to EGP 82, suggesting that it would reach EGP 83.4 during the current week. Therefore, El-Rawy advised investors to focus on stocks with good performance. Market capital during the week was at EGP 701.8bn, up from 2.21% the week before, amounting to EGP 695.2bn. Shares accounted for 49.68% of total turnover, while bonds constituted about 50.32% of transactions. Rania Yacoub, chairperson 3Way-Finance, said that the main indexes witnessed a leap in the middle of last week, to close near the resistance level at 13,850. She expected that the main index will continue its uptrend to approach the 14,000 points level, especially since the beginning of December the main index fell strongly and stock prices also declined to reach unprecedented areas of support, which provides opportunities for purchasing. Yacoub suggested that the main index will leap at the end of the year to close at levels near 14,300 points, supported by the continuation of the upsurge, pointing out that the leading stocks still hold the largest share of trading. Egyptians accounted for 60% of trading on the EGX, while foreigners accounted for 29.3%, and Arabs 10.7% after excluding deals. Vice Chairperson of Horizon Securities Moatasem Al-Shaheedi expected the market to continue its rise during the current week, for the main index to move between 14,200 levels in the first sessions of the week and close above 14,500 points at the end of the week. He added that last week's sessions showed a noticeable increase in the CIB stocks, which acquired two-thirds of last Thursday's trading, pointing out that the high market liquidity rate is a positive indicator at all levels. Al-Shaheedi advised investors to keep the financial positions of low credit, and to replace stocks of a poor financial performance with strong solvency stocks. Foreigners registered a net purchase of EGP 270.1m during the past week's transactions, while the Arabs recorded a net purchase of EGP 21.4m during the same period, after excluding deals. Mahmoud Amin, director of the Research Unit of Tycoon Securities Brokerage, expected that the main index indicators will continue to rise during the current week's sessions, so the main index will move between 14,000-14,300 points, supported by the continued purchases by foreigners for the CIB share. On that note, Amin added that the rise of the main index during the last Thursday's session came under the leadership of CIB, which acquired 40% of the EGX trading during the session, with the support of foreign institutions' purchases of the stock. He advised investors to monitor the movement of institutions within the market and focus on stocks with institutional momentum. Noteworthy, the Egyptians' transactions represented 66.7% of the trading value of the listed shares since the beginning of the year after excluding the deals, while the foreigners scored 24.6% and the Arabs recorded 8.7%. Foreigners recorded a net sale of EGP 1.9bn, while the Arabs recorded a net sale of EGP 1.04bn on listed shares after excluding deals since the beginning of the year.
