Bloomberg- Egypt’s stock exchange, the third-best performing equity market in the world over the past three years, plans to introduce short-selling by the end of this quarter and exchange-traded funds by mid-year to attract more investors.
The regulatory changes will make it easier for investors to buy and sell Egyptian stocks and protect themselves from sudden swings in the market from such factors as oil prices or the U.S. subprime crisis, Cairo & Alexandria Stock Exchanges Chairman Maged Shawky said in an interview in New York.
“It will also mean further widening of our investor base, as not many institutions are willing to invest in our market because they want to see more hedging tools,” he said at an investor conference at the New York Stock Exchange.
Trading volume on the Cairo-based bourse has risen 10-fold in four years to 2 billion Egyptian pounds ($360.3 million) a day, as the exchange made regulatory changes to allow margin trading, in which investors borrow money to buy stocks, and economic growth accelerated, Shawky said. Foreign investors now account for more than a third of trading.
