The UAE’s stock markets were down as they opened for the first time in 2016.
The Dubai Financial Market General Index lost 0.5 per cent on Sunday, while the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange General Index lost 0.8 per cent.
The kickoff of trading for the year came three days after a fire ravaged The Address Downtown Dubai hotel, which is owned by Emaar Properties. The developer is the most important single stock in the Dubai market, accounting for 18.6 per cent of the index’s weight.
On Sunday the company’s shares fell as much as 4.4 per cent in early trade but recovered most of that by the close, finishing down 1.5 per cent at Dh5.60 a share.
Emaar shares fell 21.6 per cent in 2015, with a price range for the year between Dh8.24 a share and Dh5.13 a share.
Emaar’s malls unit, Emaar Malls, operates company flagship The Dubai Mall, which is next to the Address hotel in Downtown Dubai. Shares in Emaar Malls began trading on October 1, 2014. They rose 1.4 per cent in 2015. On Sunday, they followed the same general pattern as the parent company: they were down as much as 1.8 per cent early on, but finished down 0.3 per cent.
Emaar Malls is the third most important stock in Dubai, accounting for 7.8 per cent of the index’s weight.
The company with the No 2 weighting, Dubai Islamic Bank at 15.9 per cent, lost 1.7 per cent in Sunday’s trading.
Traders and market observers have identified big-picture issues for the markets in 2016 including the price of oil, the scale of China’s economic slump, and whether and when the Fed increases US interest rates.
A note for comparative purposes: on the first day of trading in 2015, the Dubai index dropped 2.2 per cent and the Abu Dhabi index shed 1.7 per cent - indeed both indices started 2015 with three losing days in a row. The indices ended the year down 16.5 per cent in the case of Dubai and down 4.8 per cent in the case of Abu Dhabi.
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