Kuwait stands out as GCC markets diverge on performance
- 28 de out. de 2025
- 3 min de leitura
Trading activity on Gulf bourses diverged in the first nine months of 2025 as investors bet big on Kuwaiti stocks and Dubai attracted additional foreign inflows, but Saudi Arabian equities lost their lustre.
GCC market activity varying
Kuwait trading volume doubled
Saudi volume down 14%
Regional stock markets have grown in international importance over the past decade. Effective market reforms, increased weightings on emerging market benchmarks and the Gulf’s economic safe-haven status brought in money from passive and active funds.
For the January-to-September period, volumes on Kuwait’s bourse nearly doubled year on year to 85 billion shares, AGBI research shows. Similarly, turnover surged 90 percent to $64 billion.
Kuwait has passed a new debt law enabling the government to again issue foreign currency bonds, and a mortgage law is nearing final approval. Expectations that these reforms will prove transformative helped Kuwait’s premier market index to rise 22 percent in the 12 months to September 30.
“Euphoria” over Kuwaiti reforms drew a lot of investors to the stock market, said Arun Leslie John, chief market analyst at Dubai’s Century Financial: “A major factor in the increase in trading is the increase in the index itself. A bullish market leads to rising participation from all investor segments, whereas a sluggish market isn’t that attractive from a participation viewpoint.”
Saudi slump
Such a phenomenon is evident on Saudi Arabia’s bourse. Trading volumes fell 14 percent in the first nine months of 2025 versus a year earlier, according to AGBI calculations.
The value of trading fell 31 percent to $270 billion over the same period. The stock index’s 6 percent decline in the 12 months to September 30 exacerbated this slump in turnover.
“Until recently, the Saudi market had been suffering somewhat both in terms of performance and volumes because it is much more of a macro play on oil,” said Julian Bruce, managing director of EFG Hermes UAE. “The market has been drifting lower, underperforming its peers, year-to-date, primarily for that reason.
“Volumes have dwindled because there’s not as much retail investor trading activity as previously.”
Brent crude is down about 14 percent this year, trading at just below $66 a barrel on Friday.
On Dubai’s stock exchange (DFM), nine-month turnover rose 77 percent year on year to $34 billion. The number of trades grew 40 percent, outstripping a 27 percent rise in the number of shares traded. This suggests retail investor activity is increasing as individuals typically buy and sell smaller quantities of shares than institutional investors.
Dubai’s index climbed 33 percent in the 12 months to September 30.
“Dubai has benefited from favourable international macro trends like the reduction in US interest rates,” said Century Financial’s John. “That has boosted investment flows to emerging markets. With Dubai being the regional trading hub, it has attracted a lot of equity inflows. The surge in trading volumes there comes almost entirely from real estate stocks.”
Activity on the Abu Dhabi bourse (ADX) grew by a smaller magnitude: turnover rose 17 percent to $71 billion in the first nine months of 2025 and its volume up 27 percent to 71 billion shares.
“Over the past 12 months, the DFM and ADX have had a good run, which is now starting to slow,” added Bruce. “Western institutions are positioned as they want to be, so the drive higher has slowed and consequently the volumes have declined slightly as well.”
Qatar’s bourse, meanwhile, has been lacklustre. Its trading volume rose 10 percent to 323 million in the first nine months of 2025, but turnover fell 3 percent to $222 billion.
“The Qatar market is sluggish,” added John. “There isn’t much depth compared with other Gulf markets, while local retail investors are also less active.”
By Matt Smith
October 28, 2025, 9:44 AM
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