Today is the accidental Enterprise Oil & Gas issue, as coverage of the EGYPS energy conference dominated the local press and seeped into the foreign press on what was a severely slow news day.

And before you read further: It rained city-wide overnight, so you may want to start your commute a bit earlier than usual this morning: Expect messy streets and high probability of gridlock. Heavy winds were just dying down outside Enterprise Global Headquarters in the People’s Democratic Republic of Maadi as we began dispatch.

Today’s weather: Cloudy with sunny periods and an afternoon high of 19°C. Expect more of the same through Friday before we see scattered showers Saturday and Sunday, according to our favorite weather app.

The EGX30 followed global markets up yesterday, advancing 0.4% by the close of the session as markets from Asia to Wall Street found firmer footing in the first trading day after a week that had seen the S&P 500 post its worst one-week losses in more than two years. The S&P 500 gained 1.4% yesterday and the Dow rose more than 400 points, CNBC reports, prompting at least one analyst to suggest that it looks as if we’re “in a corrective phase rather than the start of a bear market.” Apple, Amazon and Netflix were among yesterday’s top gainers in New York.

Are share buybacks going to come back to bite US and European markets in their collective behinds? That’s the question asked by Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway as she zeroes in on the role of corporate share buybacks—fueled by low interest rates—in smoothing out volatility. She quotes Chris Cole of Artemis Capital Advisors, who notes that companies have bought up USD 3.8 tn worth of shares since the global financial crisis. If these companies are on the sidelines as volatility-linked products and “implicitly short-vol” strategies blow up, he says, then the events of last week are “just the appetizer for the unwind that is about to come.” H/t Haitham A.

MPs are going to get tardy slips; notes home to parents could be next: House Speaker Ali Abdel Aal is rolling out a tardiness and absence policy to whip our elected representatives into shape, Ahram Gate reports. Abdel Aal said the days of leniency are now over and that he will no longer allow MPs to enter sessions past 10:30 am, blaming parliamentarians for causing him anxiety with their consistent lateness.

MUST READ- Where did your pay raise go? It may have become a bonus. The New York Times looks at how variable comp—long the staple of the finance and legal industries, among others—has spread across sectors in the United States. “A growing preference among employers for one-time awards instead of raises that keep building over time has been quietly transforming the employment landscape for two decades. But it was accelerated by the recession’s intensity, which made employers especially cautious about increasing labor costs.” Particularly relevant to Egyptian companies outside of banking and finance who are looking at their comp strategies in our high-inflation environment.

It’s a big day for: South Africa, where the ruling ANC has reportedly given President Jacob Zuma 48 hours to resign. The FT’s Gideon Rachman looks at what’s at stake for all of Africa.

And we’re not the only ones heading for a March election: Italy, one of our largest trade and tourism partners, is heading to the polls on 4 March. The Financial Times has your backgrounder here. Look for efforts to make the Regeni case a campaign issue.

A Dubai gold trader is the first in the Mideast to get a license to trade cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg reports.

For the iSheep among you: How Apple plans to root out bugs, revamp iPhone software, from wunderkind reporter Mark Guzman, now of Bloomberg. The good news: Apple will make it possible to run side-by-side instances of the same app on iPad, and apps on the iPad will be allowed to run multiple windows in tabs, just as Safari allows today. The bad news: Don’t expect those features to roll out until 2019.

PSA #1- Cairo residents may not be getting their usual reprieve from traffic this weekend as maintenance work is scheduled to take place on two sections of 6 October Bridge just over the Ramses Square area from midnight on Thursday to 6am CLT on Sunday, according to AMAY.

PSA #2- Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, which we unsentimentally dismiss as a “Hallmark holiday” designed by the capitalists and their running dog lackeys in the greeting card, flower and chocolate industries to drive sales. Plan accordingly.