Cairo – Mubasher:  The Egyptian Exchange reversed a five-day winning streak, ending Wednesday’s trading session in the red territory.

The benchmark shed 64.17 points, or 0.82%, to reach 7,799.86 points at close.

The most EGX30 heavyweight stock, CIB, ended the session 0.38% higher, topping trading values with a turnover of EGP151.322 million after 3.56 million shares were traded over 1,240 transactions.

The total market value lost around EGP3 billion ($337 million), or 0.72% session-over-session to EGP416.471 billion from EGP419.522 billion.

Nationals and foreign investors were net sellers by EGP58.44 and EGP38.6 million respectively, while Arabs were net buyers by EGP97.03 million.

With 371.958 million shares changing hands, trading value reached EGP966.79 million.

The small and mid-cap EGX70 closed 1.31% lower to 376.90 points. The broader index EGX100 declined by 1.17% to 803.02 points. The equal-weighted index EGX50 finished 1.69% down to 1481.24 points.

The top gainers were led by Saudi Egyptian Investment & Finance with a rise of 9.99%, followed by North Africa Co. for Real Estate Investment (+6.04%) and Assiut Islamic Trading (+5.28%).

On the flip side, the top losers were Porto Group, Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt - In US Dollars, and Egypt Aluminum after falling by 8.33%, 5.84%, and 5.11% respectively.

The benchmark was buoyed today by the process of profit-taking that came into the scene during Tuesday and Wednesday’s trading session, said  Mohamed Ismail, technical analyst at Golden Hand securities, pointing out that EGX30 is still moving upwardly, though.

The analyst described today’s decline as “healthy correction movement” that will drive the main gauge to retest previous broken resistances, while having strong support at 7,665-7,550 points. The main index, he continued, still targets the mark of 8,200 as long as hovering above the previous support marks.

Translated by Ahmed El-Sayed Ali