Business & Money | Sunday 27 November, 2016 3:35 pm |

The tale of two divergent stories continued into the second to last week of November. Saudi and Egypt galloped even further ahead fueled by strong buying flow while UAE and Qatar meandered and drifted.

 

Saudi’s 13% monthly gain is causing a growing number of analysts to question the sustainability of such a move especially since it is completely uncorrelated to the price of oil which would be a screaming red flag just in itself. The real story should be revealed on Nov 30th. If OPEC manages to find an output deal, then the Saudi rally will have further legs but if nothing comes out of the Vienna meeting then that would constitute the perfect reason to book profits and move to the sidelines.

 

Egypt’s monthly 35% rise looks impressive but everything in Egypt should be looked at cautiously. In dollar terms, Egyptian equities still trade at a deep discount so market participants will have numerous valuation techniques and logic to determine optimal entry and exit points. So while Saudi and Egypt garner all the attention UAE and Qatar are struggling to entice investors back to their markets. This has caused Qatar to become the worst performing regional market this year while UAE is struggling to maintain any momentum and is now fighting key support levels to prevent further declines.

 

The coming week regardless of the Vienna outcome will cap a fruitful month for one half of the regional landscape and it may continue into the end of the year although enough reasons exist to also temper the current buying enthusiasm.