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:

"Qatari 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 3.7 percent to close below 10,000, a key support level, for the first time since November 2013 and Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All Share Index slumped to the lowest since 2012. The DFM General Index chalked up the longest losing streak 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 2.1 percent.
Emerging markets posted their worst week since September as investors brace for the Federal Reserve’s meeting 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.
“Welcome to the new normal: lower growth, lower government spending and more focus on core strategic infrastructure projects,” said Tariq Qaqish, the head of asset management at Dubai-based Al Mal Capital PSC. The company is focused on investments in stocks that are “negatively correlated to the drop in oil prices, including those in the airlines, telecommunications, logistics, and healthcare sectors,” he said."



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