Driven by a bullish sentiment, foreign investors pushed Egyptian indexes up on Sunday, traders said. The country's main index EGX 30 gained 57.75 points tracking a rise in Orascom Construction Industries' (OCI) shares. OCI, Egypt's largest builder by market value, jumped by 2.44 per cent, closing at LE225.56 per ($39.8) share, traders added. Arab and non-Arab investors made net purchases worth LE93 million and LE114.7 million respectively. The North African country's benchmark index closed at 6,300.84 points. The EGX 70 index, which measures 70 of the country's small and mid caps, added 1.35 to 5546.89 points. Volume hit LE1.7 billion, according to the Egyptian Exchange. Orascom Telecom, the largest Arab mobile operator by subscribers, rose by 0.72 per cent to LE5.61 per share. EFG-Hermes, the country's largest investment bank by market value, fell by 1.76 per cent to LE28.99 per share. "Local markets tend to follow global trends," Ziad Dabbas, financial analyst at National Bank of Abu Dhabi, told Bloomberg. "Today's movements are following positive global closes toward the end of last week, as they improved investor sentiment." On Friday, US stocks rose in a late rally as a strong forecast from a chip maker lifted tech shares and helped alleviate concerns about the economy's health after an unexpected drop in retail sales, according to Reuters. National Semiconductor Corp rose five per cent to $14.21 a day after it forecast margins and revenues above estimates after a horrible 2009. The Philadelphia Semiconductor index rose 1.4 per cent. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 38.54 points, or 0.38 per cent, to 10,211.07. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 4.76 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 1,091.60. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 24.89 points, or 1.12 per cent, to 2,243.60. For the week, the Dow rose 2.8 per cent, the S&P gained 2.5 per cent and the Nasdaq advanced 1.1 per cent. US retailers' sales unexpectedly fell in May for the first time in eight months, the US Commerce Department reported. But a jump in a consumer sentiment index to a near 2-1/2-year high in a preliminary reading for June tempered fears of a slowing economic recovery. In another bullish sign, the S&P 500 found technical support around the 1,077 level that marks its 14-day simple moving average. The benchmark posted its first back-to-back close above its 14-day SMA since late April. The CBOE Volatility Index, a gauge of investor anxiety, fell 5.8 per cent to settle at 28.79, its lowest level since May 13. Big-cap pharmaceutical companies' shares also advanced after Barclays Capital upgraded the sector to "positive" from "neutral," citing the revenue potential of new products. US-listed shares of BP Plc climbed 3.6 per cent to $33.97 as UK officials made supportive comments about the company, even as scientists doubled estimates of the Gulf of Mexico's oil spill. About 7.31 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, the lowest in more than two months and sharply below last year's estimated daily average of 9.65 billion.
