Almost 90% of voters backed the constitutional amendments in this week’s three-day referendum, the head of the National Elections Authority announced yesterday. Just over 44% of some 61 mn eligible voters turned out. We have more in this morning’s Speed Round + Last Night’s Talk Shows.

It’s the second and final day for the Arab Federation of Exchanges’ two-day annual conference and the second and final day of the SME governance workshop hosted by the Egyptian Private Equity Association and the IFC.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi is heading to Beijing for China’s Belt and Road Forum, which begins tomorrow and ends on Saturday. El Sisi is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the summit, which will be attended by 40 heads of state.

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 closed at record highs yesterday, with the usual readers of tea leaves suggesting this reflects optimism about an “improving global economy” (just a few weeks after the media was trumpeting the IMF’s warnings to the contrary) and signs that the much-ballyhooed 1Q2019 earnings apocalypse “may not come to pass.” The news is getting plenty of ink at the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Reuters.

The passive revolution is reaching critical mass in debt markets, too. “The amount of assets held in exchange-traded bond funds has pushed past USD 1 tn, capping a near fivefold increase since the financial crisis, and underscoring a radical reshaping of the world’s debt markets.” Equity ETFs “continue to dominate the USD 5.6 tn assets industry,” Financial Times adds, but the rise in fixed-income ETFs suggest investors have “become increasingly comfortable using such vehicles as tools for trading, and to build up broad bond portfolios.” You can look at the origins of the bond ETF revolution here in the salmon-coloured paper in a piece penned by former Mideast correspondent Robin Wigglesworth.

Early retirement might not be all it’s cracked up to be, according to a Debbie Downer of a Wall Street Journal piece. Research suggests that health problems intensify after early retirement and abate after policies encouraging work are introduced. Lack of physical activity, social isolation, and financial insecurity are just some of the possible characteristics of early retirement that can wreak havoc on a person’s health. Read this alongside the NYT’s piece on the need to rethink retirement, which notes that in a world in which folks are living longer, “A 30-to-40-year retirement is very different than a 10- or 20-year retirement.”

Also: Why “finding your passion” is such terrible advice, wherein the New York Times pours cold water on a generation of guidance counsellors and self-help gurus with its very sensible caution that just like toddlers learning how to walk, we need to accept the “hard truth … that we’re pretty bad at most things when we first try them.”

Randomly noted: It’s grandparents vs. parents in the battle over how much screen time the kiddies should get, courtesy the Wall Street Journal.

The Darwin Awards: More than 250 people died between 2011 and 2017 while stepping in front of the camera for a selfie. Outside magazine has an oddly engrossing take.

*** Enterprise is taking a few days off. We hope you are, too. We’ll be back in your inbox at the usual hour on Thursday, 2 May.

The EGX and banks are closed tomorrow through Monday (25-29 April) in observance of Sinai Liberation Day, Coptic Easter and Sham El Nessim. Markets will then close again on Wednesday, 1 May, in observance of Labour Day.

A very Happy Easter to all those who are celebrating. And forgive us, mothers-in-law everywhere, for we shall not partake of fiseekh or ringa the next day.

Look for the EGX and banks to move to shortened Ramadan hours on or about Monday, 6 May, which the National Astronomy Institute suggests will be the first day of the Holy Month.

We’ll have pleasantly hot weather over the break, with the mercury set to rise from 30°C today to 36°C on Easter Sunday before settling in to a range of 32-34°C through the first week of Ramadan. Feels like the start of summer to us.