Qatar Leads Mideast Stock Retreat After Oil Sinks to 2008 Low - Bloomberg Business

Qatar Leads Mideast Stock Retreat After Oil Sinks to 2008 Low - Bloomberg Business:

"Qatar stocks led a retreat in Middle Eastern markets as oil’s decline to a seven-year low, scant evidence of a pick-up in Chinese growth and the prospect of a U.S. interest-rate increase next week unsettled investors across the region.
The QE Index sank 3.9 percent to 9,625.36 at 10:54 a.m. in Doha, the lowest since October 2013. The DFM General Index dropped for a sixth day, its longest losing sequence in a year, on investor concern that companies in Dubai, the Middle East’s commercial hub, may suffer if Gulf Arab governments reduce spending next year. The ADX General Index in Abu Dhabi, home to about 6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, lost 1.7 percent.
Emerging markets posted their worst week since September in the five days through Friday as asset prices from Shanghai to Istanbul and Sao Paulo retreated. While investors brace for this week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve and look for signs of an economic rebound in China, markets across the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council are being additionally roiled by a rout in crude prices that’s stoking concern countries will pare back budgets. Oil, their main source of revenue, has extended losses since the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries chose to keep flooding the market at its Dec. 4 meeting, racking up its biggest weekly loss in more than a year."



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