Egypt's small- and mid-cap shares ran far ahead of its blue chips in August. The EGX70 index rose 14.6% over the month, while the benchmark EGX30 gained 2.66% to close near 54,900 points, according to monthly market data compiled by Enterprise.
Total capitalisation of the Egyptian Exchange rose 8.9% over the month to EGP 4.29trn, the same report said. The Shariah-compliant EGX33 index also rose 8.9%. Both gauges outperformed the EGX30, whose gain Enterprise itself characterised as modest.
The move carried into the new month. On 1 September, the EGX30 added another 1.03% to close at 55,431.29 points, the EGX70 rose 2.03% to 21,318.22 points and the EGX100 gained 1.73% to 27,735.23 points, according to Amwal Al Ghad. Total market capitalisation at the close that day stood at EGP 4,353,625,512,101, or about EGP 4.35trn.
Every sector on the exchange finished August higher
The August gains were spread across the whole board rather than concentrated in a handful of large listings. Every sector on the exchange closed the month in positive territory, Enterprise reported, and the largest moves came in parts of the market that sit well outside the benchmark's heaviest weightings.
- Textiles and durables: up 23.4%
- Building materials: up 22.7%
- Healthcare and pharmaceuticals: up 19.4%
- Contracting and construction engineering: up 18.6%
- Industrial goods, services and automobiles: up 13.7%
The laggards still finished in the green. Education services rose 0.8%, real estate 3.8%, and IT, media and communications 5.1%, according to the same data. Real estate's position near the bottom of the table is worth holding on to, because foreign money moved in the opposite direction.
Local institutions and retail bought; foreign institutions sold
Excluding block trades, local institutions were net buyers of EGP 3.06bn of listed stocks in August and local retail investors net bought EGP 2.71bn, Enterprise reported. Foreign institutions went the other way, net selling EGP 3.9bn after buying a net EGP 1.4bn in July. Regional individuals net sold EGP 1.08bn and regional institutions net sold EGP 847.9mn. Foreign retail investors were marginal net buyers, at EGP 56.4mn.
Within that foreign selling, the rotation was specific. Foreign investors net sold EGP 1.98bn of banking shares — a sector that accounted for 38.4% of their gross turnover — while net buying EGP 585.9mn of real estate shares, according to the same report. The sector that foreigners bought into is the one that placed second from bottom on the month's performance table.
The pattern repeated on 1 September, on a much larger scale. Egyptian investors were net buyers of EGP 14.80bn in that single session, while Arab investors net sold EGP 6.49bn and non-Arab foreign investors net sold EGP 8.31bn, Amwal Al Ghad reported. Summed together, the two selling groups exactly matched the domestic bid.
What the turnover figures show, and what they do not
Activity was heavy. Volumes rose to 79.45bn securities in August from 69.27bn in July, and the number of transactions jumped to 6.6 million from 4.7 million, Enterprise reported. Retail investors carried most of it: their buy-plus-sell activity came to EGP 476.72bn of the EGP 592.51bn traded on both sides, or roughly 80% of the market.
One figure needs care. The same report puts August's trading value at EGP 2.49trn, down from EGP 2.55trn in July — about four times the EGP 592.51bn both-sides figure used to calculate the retail share. The two are presented on different bases and the report does not reconcile them, so they should not be read as measuring the same thing.
Brokerage market share was concentrated. Thndr handled 21.2% of August's trading, ahead of EFG Hermes on 9.7% and Mubasher on 5.9%, according to Enterprise. Over the year to date the ranking is tighter: Thndr on 15.9%, EFG Hermes on 13.1% and Mubasher on 6.2%.
The caveats
Neither source offers an explanation for the rally. There is no attribution in either report to interest rate decisions, the pound, the Central Bank of Egypt or the country's IMF programme, and none is assumed here. What the data establishes is the direction and the breadth of the move, not its cause.
Nor does either source describe August as the strongest month of 2026 on the exchange. The outsized numbers belong to the EGX70 and to the sector indices rather than to the benchmark, whose 2.66% Enterprise called modest. Establishing a best-month claim would require a full monthly series for the year, which neither report provides.
The market capitalisation figure moves on a different basis again. Capitalisation rose 8.9% in August while the EGX30 rose 2.66%. The total covers every listed company rather than the benchmark's constituents, and neither report breaks down how much of the increase came from price gains as against changes in the pool of listed shares. The breadth of the sector gains makes price movement the obvious bulk of it, but the published data does not separate the two.
Single-session moves in individual names should also be read with caution. On 1 September the biggest gainers were Al Tawfeek Leasing, up 19.93% to EGP 6.80, and KORRA, up 19.83% to EGP 4.29, with TransOceans Tours up 17.65% to EGP 0.06. The steepest fall was Alexandria New Medical Center, down 20% to EGP 104.59, followed by Lotus for Agricultural Investments, down 8.85% to EGP 1.03, and Industrial and Engineering Projects, down 6.60% to EGP 0.99. Those are one day's closing prices in individual listings, not a trend.
The gap between the EGX70's 14.6% and the EGX30's 2.66% is the month's clearest signal, and it is a gap between different sets of companies rather than a single market moving as one. Whether the domestic bid that absorbed August's foreign selling holds is a question the next set of monthly exchange data will answer, and neither of these reports attempts to.
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