CAIRO - Foreign buying lifted Egypt's main index on Tuesday, traders said. Arab and non-Arab investors made net purchases worth LE2.2 million and LE17.3 million ($3 million) respectively. Locals made net sell-offs worth LE38.3 million, according to the Egyptian Exchange. The North African country's benchmark index EGX 30 added 0.48 per cent to 6,945.8 points. The EGX 70, which measures 70 of the country's small and mid caps, shed 0.82 per cent to 723.98 points. Volume hit LE720 million, according to the Egyptian Exchange. Orascom Telecom, the largest Arab mobile operator by subscribers, rose by 1.42 per cent to LE4.3 per share. Real-estate developer SODIC added 0.41 per cent to LE106.6 per share.by 0.74 per cent to LE2.69 per share. Commercial International Bank (CIB) shed 0.13 per cent to LE47.02 per share. Meanwhile, European shares hit a 27-month high in holiday-thinned trade, with record high copper prices on supply concerns helping mining stocks, according to Reuters. The stock market was also supported by China saying it backed steps taken by European authorities to tackle the region's debt problems. North Korea's promise to a US envoy to allow in UN inspectors also helped. Appetite for risky assets grew, with the VDAX-NEW volatility index falling 2.6 per cent to trade near last week's 32-month low. The lower the index, the higher the market's desire to buy riskier assets such as equities. "Tensions in Korea seem to have eased a little bit and that may be adding to sentiment. On balance, we had reasonably good economic figures from the United States and corporate earnings generally have been above expectations," said Keith Bowman, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. "But there is not a great deal of direction in the market due to relatively lower volumes." Volumes on the FTSEurofirst 300 were 11.5 per cent of the three-month daily average. European stocks continued to trade at relatively cheap levels, with the average price-to-earnings ratio for the STOXX 600 at 10.9, below the 10-year average of 13.8, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream. The technical picture also improved. The Euro STOXX 50, the eurozone's blue-chip index, hovered above its 50-day moving average and a 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of a major fall to a trough in 2009 from a high in 2007. "The most important reason for the move, however, is seasonality," said Philippe Gijsels, head of research at BNP Paribas Fortis Global Markets, in Brussels. "This is the traditionally best season of the year. On top of this, active money managers have had one of the worst years in history. So, they try to play catch-up and buy every dip. We expect markets to remain well supported into the New Year."
