Shuaa lights the touch paper for market lift-off

It was quite a week for UAE stock markets, with all the indices heading in the right direction for once. Optimism over the two core fundamentals – property and oil prices – combined to produce a wave of positive sentiment for the first time since last autumn, and I believe this will be more than the proverbial “dead cat bounce”.

Barring major global upsets, the consensus is that energy prices will continue to strengthen for the rest of the year. Property is more uncertain, but with falls of up to 50 per cent already this year, some are beginning to see the bottom. At least one major banking institution is about to publicly “call” the property market, I hear. Brave indeed.

At the heart of last week’s surge was the UAE’s very own Shuaa Capital, which has become something of a barometer for the health of the Dubai financial community. Shuaa contributed to the optimism on DFM on three fronts: first, it produced research showing that investor confidence in the region was on the up for the first time in many months. A healthy 43 per cent of respondents thought things would improve in the next half year.