[2008-01-24]  Egypt shares jump, reversing slide
Egypt's benchmark stock index .CASE30 posted its sharpest single-day gain in at least a year as investors deemed shares had fallen too far in a slide the past five sessions.

Shares of Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) OCIC.CA (OCICq.L: Quote, Profile, Research) paced gains, climbing 4.5 percent to 563.79 Egyptian pounds ($101.77). Shares in OCI, Egypt's largest construction company by market value, had dropped nearly 9 percent over the past five sessions.

"The good shares had gone down with the bad," said Angus Blair, head of research at Cairo investment bank Beltone Financial.

A surprise U.S. rate cut on Tuesday helped lift stocks in Europe and Asia and boosted foreign buying of Egyptian shares, which had been dragged down by the global sell-off earlier this week.

Egypt's Case 30 index climbed 4.3 percent to 10,052.18 points.

"The global markets are bouncing up again and the local markets are following," said Mohamed Radwan, head of international sales at Pharos Securities. "Retail investors are responding aggressively."

Orascom Telecom ORTE.CA (ORTEq.L: Quote, Profile, Research), which led slides over the past two sessions, gained 2 percent to 77 pounds.

"It fell sharply and it's going to be the first to respond positively to a rebound," Radwan said.

Egypt's Hermes index .HRMS gained 3.75 percent to 89,454.84 points. The broader CIBC index .CIBC rose 3.91 percent to 417.81 points.

Source: © Reuters 2008