Cairo: Egypt will lengthen trading hours on its stock exchange and reinstate pre-trading from August 7, it said in a statement on Monday, as it looks to normalise activities following the turmoil of recent years.
The trading session will be extended by 30 minutes to four-and-a-half hours, plus half an hour of pre-trading.
Share prices will be allowed to move up or down by 10 per cent in pre-trading before being suspended in addition to the 10 per cent permitted during regular trading, it said — still just half of the 20 per cent limit applied before 2011.
The financial regulator suspended pre-trading and imposed tighter limits on daily share price moves when the stock market was jolted by the outbreak of street protests in early 2011 that led to the toppling of Hosni Mubarak.
More than two years of civil turmoil followed, scaring off foreign investors and tourists — key sources of income and foreign currency for the Arab world’s most populous country.
The new trading hours send a clear message that Cairo’s bourse had recovered from the events of recent years, the head of the stock exchange, Mohammad Omran, said.
