It has been two weeks since Hosni Mubarak was removed from his 30-year rule in Egypt. Banks are open and many Egyptians have resumed their jobs, but the country’s stock market remains closed and investors are wary about region. Should they be?

Ahmed Fattouh, an Egyptian-American investor and chief executive of hedge fund and private equity firm Globalist Capital Management,  spoke to Reuters about his thoughts on investing in Egypt after political turmoil.  Fattouh, whose firm has offices in New York, London and Dubai, oversees about $300 million in assets and has been investing in the Middle East since 2005.  He visited Cairo and Tahrir Square in the past few weeks and shared his thoughts.

Q: Ahmed, where are the opportunities to invest in Egypt given all of the turmoil?

A: Obviously there are going to be some distressed opportunities and this is a volatile time. The market has been closed for weeks, and obviously when it reopens there will be a good deal of selling pressure.  That will obviously create some opportunities in terms of forced sellers and panicked sellers who will not be  very focused on the fundamentals.

Q: What kind of investors are in Egypt now?

A: In Egypt, and in the Middle East in general, you don’t have a lot of true institutional investors. You do have some funds, but retail is a large proportion of the total.  Gulf Arabs are a significant proportion and then you have foreign investors. Foreign investors, while they tend to look more at fundamentals than the retail market and regional investors, they are a bit more jittery because they have had a pretty difficult time trying to analyze the political outlook. For them, while there are opportunities, many of them are long-only investors who may take a wait and see attitude or step back and say maybe there are other places to make emerging markets plays.  Meanwhile, the retail investors obviously are motivated by fear and greed, and when they start to see the sort of uncertainty you have right now, they sell first and ask questions later.  Though western hedge funds and smaller funds that have a special situations or distressed bucket will be looking at Egypt pretty carefully.