"The market has kept a steady growth during the week with EGX30 reaching a strong resistance level at 17,600 points despite its decline on Wednesday, as some liquidity was leaving the benchmark index for the EGX70," Mohamed Hassan, Investment Funds Director at Odin Investments, told Ahram Online.

"The EGX30 needs very positive economic news to break above the 17,600-point resistance level, which it reached seven times before and proved hard to surpass," Hassan added. 

The benchmark index, EGP30, rose 1.36 percent over the week to end at 17,578.67 points, while the EGX70 gained 2.11 percent to 3,500.48 points. 

The EGX100 grew by 2 percent this week to close at 5,185.97 points.

Positive forecasts for EGX70
 

"The coming period could see more liquidity leaving the benchmark to be invested in EGX70 stocks, which could pressure the EGX30 to reach 17,000 points and push the 70 index towards its historic level at 3,700 points," Hassan suggested.

"I advise investors to focus on state-owned companies which could be offered to strategic investors. Among the promising sectors in the coming period are fertilizers, petrochemicals, non-banking financial, and tourism, which is expected to gain momentum as the government release positive data," the market expert noted.

Trading value dropped
 

Over the week, the market capitalization reached EGP 1.181 trillion, up by around 1.06 percent from EGP 1.168 trillion in the previous week.

Total trading value slashed to EGP 6.6 billion during the four-session week compared to EGP 15 billion last week.

Over the week ended 19 July, trading volume reached 3.8 billion shares traded through 340,000 transactions.

Egyptians controlled 87 percent of the total market trades throughout the week, while non-Arab foreigners and Arabs made up 5.4 percent and 7.7 percent of trading, respectively.