Foreign Flows Favor Qatar Over Saudi Stocks as Gulf Spat Lingers - Bloomberg

Foreign Flows Favor Qatar Over Saudi Stocks as Gulf Spat Lingers - Bloomberg:

Foreign stock investors have made clear which side of the Saudi Arabia-versus-Qatar conundrum they favor, at least in 2018.

Overseas institutional investors were net buyers of about $2.3 billion of shares traded on Doha’s bourse this year, more than triple the foreign flows into Riyadh, according to stock-exchange data compiled by Bloomberg.

Inflows have picked up in Qatar this year after several large-cap companies announced they were easing limits on foreign ownership, prompting an adjustment of their weighting in benchmarks used by emerging-market fund managers. In Saudi Arabia, overseas investors were net buyers of as much as $3 billion at a peak in June, but that figure fell to around $700 million after a sell-off following the murder of newspaper columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.