CAIRO: Main Egyptian stock indexes followed European shares higher on Thursday ahead of a long Muslim holiday, with mobile phone operator Mobinil soaring 13 percent.
We were mainly following markets in Europe, said Ashraf Akhnoukh of CIBC Brokerage. But it is a fake rally because the volumes were very low, he said.
Shares in Mobinil last traded at LE 136 ($24.61), and other telecom shares followed suit to lead the market up. Regional mobile phone operator and Mobinil stakeholder Orascom Telecom rose 6.24 percent to LE 25.01, and fixed-line monopoly Telecom Egypt surged 8.33 percent to LE 16.
Mobinil is one of the few shares that did not suffer any downgrades, said Mohamed Kotb, director of asset management at Naeem Financial Investment. Technically speaking, breaking the LE 128 barrier was a trigger to buy in the stock.
The benchmark CASE 30 index ended 1.99 percent up at 4,059.08 points. The Hermes index rose 1.66 percent to 385.69 points.
