For the second day in a row, Egypt's main index slipped on Monday as locals were driven by a bearish sentiment, traders said. The North African country's benchmark index EGX 30 fell by 0.12 per cent to 6,517.34 points. But the EGX 70 index, which measures 70 of the country's small and mid caps, was nearly flat at 599.84 points. Local investors made net sell-offs worth LE99.5 million ($17.5 million). Arabs and non-Arabs made net purchases worth LE76.9 million and LE22.6 million respectively, according to the Egyptian Exchange. Orascom Construction Industries, Egypt's largest builder by market value, rose by 0.38 per cent, closing at LE254.17 per share. Orascom Telecom, the largest Arab mobile operator by subscribers, shed 1.12 per cent to LE5.32 per share. In a related event, National Cement achieved an 18 per cent increase in annual net profit as its sales inched higher, according to Reuters. The firm's unaudited net profit was LE321.7 million. Sales by volume in the fiscal year to June 30 were 3.1 million tonnes, up from 3 million last year. Meanwhile, encouraging news about the US employment picture continued to spill over onto financial markets, lifting world stocks on hopes that a slip back into recession could be avoided. The mood continued despite a relatively gloomy outlook from Olivier Blanchard, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who told France's Le Figaro he expected weak growth in both the United States and Europe. Some investors, particularly in Asia, were catching up with Friday's U.S. jobs data, which was not as bad as some had feared. The slowing of the US economy has been one of the major factors holding investors back over recent months. MSCI's all-country world stock index was up more than 0.4 per cent after a nearly 3.7 per cent gains last week. Europe's FTSEurofirst 300 edged slightly higher, up around 0.1 per cent. The jobs data was supportive, but utilities shares topped the gainers list after Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government agreed to a two-tier extension of the lifespans of German nuclear power plants on Sunday. Trading was also thin because U.S. markets are closed for Labor Day. Japan's Nikkei closed up 2.05 percent. "After a string of disappointing numbers, the data last week provided an element of stability and helped increase risk appetite," said Henk Potts, an equity strategist at Barclays Wealth. "When you couple that with the outlook for corporates, it looks pretty good." The latest corporate earnings season has been relatively strong in both the United States and Europe while merger and acquisition activity in August was the most robust for the month since 1999. The dollar was generally weaker with the euro rising for a time to its highest in three weeks before easing back. The euro was down 0.1 per cent at $1.2879, having risen to $1.2918 earlier in the day, its highest since August 12. The dollar index, a gauge of the greenback's performance against a basket of six major currencies, was flat and the dollar fell slightly to 84.26 yen, not far from a 15-year low of 83.58 hit late last month.
