Business & Money | Monday 22 August, 2016 8:30 am |

Regional markets should take a positive view going into the new week as Brent sends confident signals that hit the USD50 mark over the weekend. Al Masah Capital weekly report indicates that “the two main triggers that everyone is eyeing now are the Fed’s upcoming meeting, with views being divided between the urgency to raise interest rates and the preference to wait as long as inflation remains benign”. Following this, oil producers are scheduled to meet next month and their output decisions will have an impact on oil prices and consequently all markets indices’ performances especially the MENA markets. 

Egypt approached its resistance level last week with the IMF news losing its magic over investors buying appetite, as they consider the news being priced in, however, today will also witness the voting over applying VAT by a specialized committee before being presented in front of the parliament, so cautiousness may be the name of the game in Egypt.

FTSE’s announcement last week concerning relaxing its liquidity tests for Qatari stocks to be included in its widely tracked FTSE Emerging Markets Index had a strong positive impact on the Qatari index.

 Markets in general ended last week on a mixed note with Qatar being the best performer going up by 3.33%, followed by Dubai which went up by 1.4%. Worst performing were Saudi Arabia which headed south by 1.6%, followed by Egypt that went down by 0.7% and Abu Dhabi by 0.19%.