Is today ‘D Day’? There are unconfirmed reports that the Central Bank of Egypt will devalue the EGP at an extraordinary auction today, according to a tweet overnight by Carina Kamel, the generally very well-sourced senior correspondent at Al Arabiya. Kamel says the move follows news that the parallel market rate is closing in on EGP 16.00, the latest record low.

We have the USD 6 bn in third-party funding the IMF wants? Kamel’s suggestion came as a report last night by Bloomberg’s Ahmed Feteha cited an unnamed central bank official as saying Saudi Arabia has deposited USD 2 bn at the Central Bank of Egypt. That was immediately followed by news from a senior Finance Ministry official that we have closed the USD 6 bn in third-party funding the IMF requires to sign-off on a USD 12 bn extended fund facility.

CBE Board to meet today? Expectations were high that the Central Bank of Egypt would make the decision to devalue yesterday at the biweekly meeting of its board. The meeting was postponed to today as some members were unable to attend due to unspecified “scheduling conflicts,” sources tell Al Mal.

When should we know what’s going on? The CBE’s weekly currency auction typically takes place at 11am, as have many of its extraordinary auctions. If that pattern holds, we could know as early as 11:30am.

Two pieces of evidence to the contrary: We think it’s largely undeniable that tensions are brewing between Egypt and KSA, and the lack of information on when the KSA funds arrived leave in question the status of ties and endgame. Also: One of our favourite sources drew our attention to an anonymously sourced (and so far completely unconfirmed) piece in online tabloid Dotmisr suggesting that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi had nixed CBE Governor Tarek Amer’s suggestion of a devaluation to EGP 13.00 for fear of its impact on the poor and low-income earners. We think the evidence of USD 6 bn in funding in place (and the moving of the CBE board meeting today) outweigh these concerns, but still…

Wait — did you say EGP 16.00? It’s heading in that direction on the parallel market, yes. Importers gave Reuters a range of EGP 15.20-15.68 per USD 1.00 yesterday, with one commodities trader saying he was quoted levels as high as EGP 15.80. The last quoted price we heard was from a significant buyer who was quoted EGP 15.75. You need to take all parallel market pricing with a grain of salt: There are virtually no greenbacks changing hands at these prices. Reality check: The EGP has tumbled a bit more than 21% on the parallel market since the beginning of the month.Just a month and a half ago, the whispered plea / fear in our circle was: “Do you think it could really hit 15.00?” The community clearly expects the EGP to overshoot before hitting a market-clearing rate; the challenge is estimating what that rate is when so much liquidity is held by a vast swath of USD-holders clinging desperately to USD 10k or USD 50k, waiting to sell into a free-fall.

We have more on all of this in Speed Round, below.