Motivated by a foreign bullish sentiment, Egypt's main index hit a fresh historic record high above 16,740 points in high liquidity on Monday. The benchmark index EXG30 jumped 2.14 per cent to 16,742.15 points. The broader EGX70 and EGX100 indices gained 1.22 and 1.11 per cent to 905.28 and 2,242.18 points respectively. Volume totalled LE2.8 billion (around $159 million), bourse data showed. Locals were net sellers of LE209.63 million, bourse data showed. Arab and non-Arab investors were net buyers of LE19.1 million and LE190.5 million respectively. The EGX50 and EGX20 Capped indices added 2.31 and two per cent to 2,846.15 and 16,519.32 points respectively. Of a total 193 traded stocks yesterday 112 shares rose, 48 fell, 33 remained unchanged, market data showed. Meanwhile, most of Arab Gulf stock markets fell. The Saudi index added 1.1 per cent to 7,780.83 points. Dubai's index fell by 0.7 per cent to 3,165.51 points. In Abu Dhabi, the index gained 0.01 per cent to 4,534 points. The Qatari index surged 4.97 per cent to 8,663 points. Qatar National Bank is seeking to nearly double its foreign ownership limit. The bank will seek approval to increase non-Qatari ownership to 49 per cent from 25 per cent at an yet-to-be scheduled extraordinary general assembly, the Doha-based lender said in a statement. Foreign investors currently own about 7 per cent of QNB, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The announcement comes a day after Emirates NBD, the region's third-largest bank, said it would seek to increase its foreign ownership limit to 20 per cent from 5 per cent and raise capital by 7.35 billion dirhams ($2 billion). The shares surged 14 per cent in Dubai on Sunday. Globally, world stocks surged to a two-week high after strong US jobs data at the end of last week helped take the edge off investors' concerns about the potential outbreak of trade war between the United States and other major economies. European shares shot up across the board, following their Asian counterparts, while emerging market currencies strengthened as investors bought up so-called riskier assets and sold "safe haven" securities such as gold and government bonds. Markets have been cheering Friday's US nonfarm payrolls data which showed a hefty 313,000 rise in jobs, but also revealed that annual growth in average hourly earnings had slowed to 2.6 per cent after spiking in January. This suggested that the world's largest economy is experiencing a combination of high growth and low inflation, referred to in the market as a "Goldilocks" trend; giving investors an incentive to buy assets such as equities and high-yield bonds without having to fear tighter central bank policy. "Friday's US employment data was about as perfect a set of figures as you can get from a policy maker's point of view. The increase in jobs was nothing short of amazing," said Marshall Gittler, a strategist at ACLS Global, a currency brokerage.
