CAIRO - Driven by non-Arab buying, Egypt's main index rebounded on Thursday, traders said. Non-Arabs made net purchases worth LE94.5 million ($16.6 million), they added. The North African country's benchmark index EGX 30 gained 1.09 per cent, ending the week's trading at 6,474.45 points. The EGX 70 index, which measures 70 of the country's small and mid caps, added 0.92 per cent to 606.58 points. Orascom Telecom rose by 1.85 per cent to LE5.5 per share. Orascom Construction Industries, Egypt's largest builder by market value, inched slightly up by 1.69 per cent, to LE254.21 per share. EFG-Hermes, Egypt's largest investment bank by market value, added 1.93 per cent to LE29.04 per share. Volume hit LE712 million, according to the Egyptian Exchange. Meanwhile, world stocks bounced off seven-week lows and Japan's yen weakened in another burst of the risk-on, risk-off trading that has dominated financial markets this year. The global picture was helped along by strong corporate earnings in Europe, which boosted the FTSEurofirst 300 nearly 0.9 per cent. Both Credit Agricole and L'Oreal beat expectations. "Companies have been reporting reasonable results," said David Buik, partner at BGC Partners. "But whether a rally can be sustained is to be seen, there is nothing to say the bad news is all over." Throughout the northern hemisphere summer, markets have been balancing good corporate results with signs that growth in the world-leading US economy is falling back. But the performance of assets is also highly correlated, meaning that when investors move out of a riskier asset there is a boost to safer ones, and vice versa. That could be seen on euro zone government debt markets on Thursday, where yields rose as investors moved out of bonds in conjunction with the rise in stocks. Longer-dated German bond yields hit record lows on Wednesday after data showed new US single-family home sales slid to the slowest pace on record in July and orders for costly durable goods were weak. One of the biggest risk-off trades, meanwhile, has been buying Japanese yen. It hit a 15-year high against the dollar earlier this week. "Investors are cautiously watching whether Japanese authorities will do something," said Hideki Amikura, deputy general manager of the forex section at Nomura Trust and Banking in Tokyo. News that Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa will attend the Kansas City Federal Reserve conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this week made some players hesitant to push the yen higher.
