Most Gulf bourses end higher as Saudi leads charges; Abu Dhabi to halve commissions

Most Gulf bourses end higher as Saudi leads charges; Abu Dhabi to halve commissions

On Sunday, a basket of Gulf bourses had winded down the session modestly higher with Saudi leading the tally of gains, while Abu Dhabi bourse had decided to halve trading commissions, however, Qatar dipped following a drop in Qatar Islamic Bank.

In point of fact, in the day’s Gulf bourses had largely echoed the tone of global equity indices, as the US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s dovish remarks in an annual Jackson Hole meet of Central Bankers had pushed major stock indices in the US and EU to record closing highs, while a steep upsurge in crude oil prices ahead of a category 4 Hurricane Ida, expected to hit the US Gulf of Mexico on Monday, had supported major commodity-linked benchmarks.

Nevertheless, crude oil has always been a key catalyst in Gulf bourses given a raft of major Mid-east economies’ utter dependency on commodities such as black gold as well as natgas among others. UK and US crude oil prices skyrocketed over 11.0 per cent and 10.0 per cent respectively last week, remarking their largest weekly gains since June 2020.