Egypt’s stock market indices dive on Monday amid jitters over new coronavirus strain

Egypt’s stock exchange’s (EGX) indexes plunged on Monday as a fast-spreading new coronavirus strain in Britain threatened to torpedo worldwide markets’ optimism over a vaccine-fueled rebound in economic growth.

Benchmark EGX 30 index tumbled 2.83 percent to 10,581 points at the closing trade.

Coronavirus: new strain haunt global investors

It is thought that the new variant is up to 70 percent more transmissible than the original strain of the disease.

Due to the new variant, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Sunday the tightest social restrictions since the March lockdown. The World Health Organisation said it has so far been identified the new strain in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Australia.

This has driven several countries in Europe and elsewhere to block travel from Britain.

Indices

The EGX 70 EWI index of the leading smaller and mid cap enterprises (SME) sank 7.10 percent to 1,958 points, while the fixed-weighted index, EGX 30 Capped edged down 3.79 percent to 12,689 points. The all-embracing index, EGX 100 dived 6.67 percent to 2,853 points. Meanwhile, the equal weights index, EGX 50 plummeted 6.18 percent at 2,091 points.

Market Cap   

Total market capitalisation has incurred substantial losses worth 26.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.7 billion) to close at 627.212 billion pounds on Monday.

Trading Aggregates          

Also on Monday, the trading value has approximately reached 2.5 billion pounds, while the trading volume has almost recorded 573.7 million securities executed 46,841 transactions.