Why are we feeling more optimistic than usual heading into the last month of the year? Egypt is now a global upside story: For the first time in six years, Citigroup is selling structured notes tied to Egypt’s sovereign debt, Bloomberg reported. Citigroup is selling EGP 305 mn of one-year zero-coupon securities at 85% of the face value tied to Egypt and plans to sell EGP 273 mn more next Friday. “Investors view Egypt as an upside story … We have seen the re-emergence of demand for fixed income in Egypt. Pre-devaluation the currency was in disequilibrium making investors cautious,” Elbek Muslimov, CEEMEA head of emerging market credit trading at Citigroup says.

Bilal Khan, senior economist for Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan at Standard Chartered, agrees: “This might be a turning point for Egypt … Currency depreciation, subsidy cuts and rationalization of energy prices as well as approval from the IMF have come together for investors to look at Egyptian bonds with renewed enthusiasm.” Emre Akcakmak, portfolio advisor at East Capital, tempers expectations a bit saying, “Things may well move in a completely wrong direction depending on various internal or external factors.” However, he believes, “Egypt seems to be doing the right things so far so let us not forget that a good start is half the battle.”

A little less sanguine is Simon Williams, HSBC’s chief economist for CEEMEA, who says “that rebalancing process is going to be really really difficult … the weakening of the currency … is not going to bring in an early recovery … the pain is going to be carried by domestic demand.” (He’s quite likely right, of course, but tell that to the hordes that descended on Cairo Festival City to rip it apart in search of Black Friday deals this past weekend.) Williams’ comments on Egypt can be found here from 02:45 to 04:55.