Egypt’s funds crossed EGP 500 bn in 3Q on retail money and a stalling core

Our investment fund industry crossed EGP 500 bn in 3Q 2026. The Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) published the milestone on Sunday, the same day the EGX70 lost 11.07% of its value in a single session. Net asset value (NAV) rose 7.16% q-o-q to EGP 504.71 bn from EGP 470.97 bn, and assets under management climbed 7.27% to EGP 512.84 bn, the regulator’s 3Q report (pdf) shows, with eight new funds taking the total to 232. None of that growth was new money entering the money market funds that hold 60% of the industry’s assets: they took in less than their own compounding, which means net outflows.

The buying is almost entirely retail, and it shows up in certificates rather than in liquidity. The number of outstanding fund certificates jumped 19.21% to 52.50 bn, with individuals holding 41.90 bn of them, up from 32.90 bn at the end of June, taking their share to 79.8% from 74.7%. Institutions went the other way, holding 10.16 bn certificates against 10.72 bn three months earlier, so their share went down to 19.4% from 24.3%. Fund sponsors held the remaining 0.8%, or 441.7 mn certificates. One caveat: certificate counts and fund assets are different measures — holding 79.8% of the units is not the same as owning 79.8% of the EGP 500 bn.

On assets, the industry’s core remained mostly unchanged. Money market funds, roughly 60% of the total, grew 2.1% to EGP 303.12 bn from EGP 296.90 bn at the end of June. A base that size compounds by about EGP 12-13 bn a quarter with no new certificates sold, Azimut Egypt Managing Director Ahmed Abou El Saad tells EnterpriseAM, and the category grew by about EGP 6 bn. “That implies there were actually net outflows from those funds,” he tells us, a drawdown he reads as corporates pulling liquidity they had parked to rotate into T-bills or cover working capital. It's nothing structural, he says, just standard redemptions.

From there, the money went looking for yield. Conventional equity funds held EGP 36.01 bn at the end of September and Islamic equity funds EGP 22.82 bn. That’s EGP 58.83 bn between them, close to the EGP 59 bn Abou El Saad puts the two categories at. Index funds grew fastest, up 82.6% to EGP 13.14 bn, with precious metals funds up 26.6% to EGP 11.92 bn. Foreign-currency funds took in nearly EGP 8 bn, lifting their assets 31% to the equivalent of EGP 34.60 bn and their share of the industry to 6.9% from 5.6% — against EGP 470.10 bn for EGP-denominated funds.

Returns cooled with the EGX rally, though not everywhere: Equity funds returned an average 5.55%, down from 17.66% in 2Q, while thematic funds slid to 5.68% from 18.78%, and sector funds, which topped the table in 2Q at 18.82%, delivered 12.23%. Islamic equity funds returned 8% against 16.37%, precious metals funds gained 8.23%, and private equity funds led the quarter at 15.24%, while index funds delivered 13.03% — all ahead of the EGX30, which gained just 2.79% during the quarter. After an uninterrupted rally, a profit-taking cycle was inevitable, Abou El Saad says, and it started in September.

The trackers

The index funds that returned 13.03% owe it to the broader gauges, with the EGX70 climbing 20.14% and the EGX100 adding 17.19% in 3Q, while the benchmark went nowhere, and Abou El Saad calls that a systemic problem. Both indices are equal-weighted, so CIB carries the same allocation as the hundredth name on the list. “When massive inflows arrive, capital is forced blindly into these lower-tier stocks, inflating their valuations without justification,” he says, arguing that many constituents are uninvestable on earnings and that retail bought them precisely because they had already run. The test came in October: the EGX70 lost 11.07% in a single session on Sunday, 25 October, and the EGX100 8.88% — and even after Tuesday’s 7% rebound, both were still 12.34% and 10.65% below their 3Q closes at the end of yesterday’s session, against 5.04% for the EGX30.

IN CONTEXT- The bulk of retail money entering funds is not chasing the equity market at all. Between 85% and 90% of it goes into money market or fixed income products, Menthum CEO Himanshu Shrimali told us last month, with a knowledge gap and five years of a one-directional EGX keeping households out of equity products. Retail investors accounted for 72.7% of gross trading in listed stocks in 1H 2026, a pattern EFG Hermes’ Mohamed Abu Basha calls more characteristic of a frontier market than an emerging one.

What’s next: Growth momentum should hold into 4Q, Abou El Saad says, helped by new launches and new asset classes, with the industry still underpenetrated against GDP and bank deposits by global standards. More funds are coming: the FRA and the EGX are working on amendments to Article 29 of the Capital Market Law to let limited liability companies and simple limited partnerships get licensed to set up funds, the bourse is pushing to widen tax-exempt fund categories to 38, and the FRA’s first hedge fund rulebook took effect in September.

One caution on the numbers: The FRA reclassified funds with the Egyptian Investment Management Association in 2Q, taking its end-March count from 187 funds to 209 and restating NAV at about EGP 411 bn, so comparisons with quarters before that point are not like-for-like. What none of that changes is the shape of what has already been sold: the industry’s EGP 500 bn still sits mostly in money market funds.