Egypt stock market resumes decline after reopening

Originally Published Here

By TAREK EL-TABLAWY

CAIRO

Egypt’s benchmark stock index fell for the second consecutive day on Thursday, sliding over 4 percent but paring steeper losses earlier in the session as investors looked to unload holdings after the market’s nearly two month closure.

The Egyptian Exchange’s benchmark EGX30 index plunged 8.9 percent on Wednesday, its first day of trading since it was shuttered on Jan. 27 amid mounting mass protests that eventually ousted former President Hosni Mubarak. Prior to its January closure, the market lost over 16 percent in two consecutive trading days, reflecting investor fears about the descent into apparent chaos of a country once viewed as the most stable in the Arab world. Continue reading Egypt stock market resumes decline after reopening

2010 Stock Market: ‘QE2’ Trumps Lack of Jobs

By Michael Baron Original is here

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — The U.S. stock market’s climb this year back above its 2008 pre-financial crisis levels boils down to a simple equation: quantitative easing trumps unemployment.

Or in not quite linear apples-to-oranges mathematical terms, $600 billion is greater than 15.1 million.

The $600 billion figure represents the amount the Federal Reserve is pumping into the system via “QE2” — its ongoing second stimulus program to purchase long-term Treasury securities at a rate of around $75 billion per month through the second quarter of 2011.

While the market dipped initially after the details of “QE2” were announced on Nov. 3, the march of stocks off their July 1 lows of the year was mostly fueled by the expectation that the Fed would step in and do something if lackluster economic data continued to pile up. Continue reading 2010 Stock Market: ‘QE2’ Trumps Lack of Jobs