Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange Aims to Start Futures Trading Next Year - Bloomberg

Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange Aims to Start Futures Trading Next Year - Bloomberg:

Abu Dhabi’s stock exchange is joining a race to introduce derivatives as Gulf bourses including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia put strategies in place to lure more investors.

The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, known as ADX, plans to enable trading of futures contracts on single stocks in 2019, and they may eventually be available for the benchmark ADX General Index, Chief Executive Officer Rashed Al Blooshi said Monday in an interview, without specifying any starting dates.

Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, the biggest in the Middle East, announced last week that it will introduce index-futures trading next year, with the contracts and options on single stocks expected to be available by 2020. Investors can already trade futures on United Arab Emirates company stocks listed on the Nasdaq Dubai exchange, but liquidity is thin. The derivatives will also be part of reforms Kuwait is undertaking that may result in the exchange’s upgrade to emerging-markets status at MSCI Inc. next year.