Stock exchange sees insignificant drop after increasing violence

Following the escalation of violence across the country over the past two days, the Egyptian Stock Exchange has fallen insignificantly on Wednesday, after being closed on Tuesday due to a national holiday in commemoration of the end of the monarchy and establishment of the republic in 1952.

The EGX 30 dropped by 1.69 percent on Wednesday, while the EGX 70 lost 2.99 percent and EGX 100 fell by 2.26 percent.

Nevertheless, the trend over the last month remains highly positive as the EGX 30 has increased by 14.3 percent since the events that began with mass demonstrations at the end of June. This latest drop has simply erased the positive trend of the beginning of the week.

The country has witnessed widespread violence over the past few days. An explosive killed one and injured dozens in a police station of Mansoura on Tuesday night. Clashes on Monday night saw 12 casualties, nine of which were in Cairo, and dozens of injured.

Over one hundred people have died since June 30.

Those events prompted Minister of Defense and head of Egyptian Armed Forces Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to call for nationwide demonstrations to give the military a mandate to crackdown on “violence and terrorism” in a public speech given on Wednesday.

He further called on all political powers to participate in national reconciliation talks that start today Wednesday and stated the military would not retreat from the roadmap announced on July 3. The Muslim Brotherhood and other main Islamist political parties have already announced their intention to boycott the talks.