Finance
Why has the UAE closed its stock exchanges?
The United Arab Emirates has closed its main stock exchanges amid a widening conflict in the region following the United States and Israel’s attacks on Iran.
The UAE’s financial regulator on Sunday announced that its key exchanges in Dubai and Abu Dhabi would not immediately reopen after the weekend break amid the fallout of the US-Israeli attacks that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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The announcement that the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and Dubai Financial Market would remain closed on Monday and Tuesday came after the UAE was hit with hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks, including a strike on Abu Dhabi’s main airport that killed one person and wounded seven others.
The UAE’s Capital Markets Authority said in a statement that it would continue to monitor developments in the region and “assess the situation on an ongoing basis, taking any further measures as necessary”.
Here is all you need to know about the move.
Why has the UAE decided to shut its main stock exchanges?
The financial regulator did not elaborate on the rationale for its decision, only saying that it was taken in accordance with its “supervisory and regulatory role” in managing the country’s financial markets.
While closing the stock market outside of scheduled breaks is relatively unusual worldwide, especially in the era of electronic trading, it is not unprecedented.
Typically, when financial authorities halt stock trading during a crisis, it is because they are concerned about panic selling.
During periods of extreme volatility, such as wars and financial crises, investors often rush to sell their holdings to avoid suffering big losses.
As investors sell their stocks, the market value falls further.
This dynamic can spur a vicious cycle that, left unchecked, can lead to a full-blown market crash.
Since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, stock markets around the world have seen significant – though not catastrophic – losses, while oil prices have risen sharply.
Saudi Arabia’s benchmark Tadawul All Share Index fell more than 4 percent on Sunday, while Egypt’s EGX 30 dropped about 2.5 percent.
In Asia, major stock markets closed lower on Monday, with Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index down about 1.4 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.
The practice of shutting the market to prevent panic selling is controversial among economists and investors.
Closing the market prevents investors from accessing cash they might need in a hurry.
Critics also argue that such closures only exacerbate the sense of panic they seek to prevent and distort important signals about the market.
“Investors don’t like uncertainty, and at times of market stress, liquidity is most important. It appears the UAE just took that away,” Burdin Hickok, a professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies, told Al Jazeera.
“This move has the potential of diminishing the status of Dubai as a true major market and weaken investor confidence in the Dubai markets. There has to be some concern about capital flight and negative ripple effects.”
Has this happened before?
The UAE has closed its stock exchanges before, though not due to regional conflict.
In 2022, the UAE halted trading as part of a period of mourning declared to mark the death of President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The emirate announced a similar pause following the death of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, in 2006.
“Historically, to the best of my knowledge, no Middle Eastern state, including Israel, has closed its stock exchange during a time of regional conflict,” Hickok said.
“In prior conflicts, Israel has modified hours of their exchange, but we are talking hours, not days.”
Other countries have shuttered their stock markets during periods of major turmoil in recent years.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, authorities shut the Moscow Exchange for nearly a month.
In 2011, Egypt shut its stock exchange for nearly two months as the country was grappling with the upheaval of the Arab Spring.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq halted trading for six days, the longest suspension since the Great Depression.
How important is the UAE’s stock market?
The UAE is a relatively small player in the world of capital markets, though it has made significant inroads in recent years.
The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and Dubai Financial Market have a combined market capitalisation of about $1.1 trillion.
By comparison, the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s biggest bourse, has a market capitalisation of about $44 trillion.
Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Exchange, the biggest exchange in the Middle East, is valued at more than $3 trillion.
Still, the UAE’s stature among financial markets has been on the rise.
Before the latest crisis, UAE-listed stocks had been on a winning streak.
The Dubai Financial Market General Index, which includes companies such as Emirates NBD and Emaar Properties, rose more than 29 percent in the 12 months to February 27.
Haytham Aoun, an assistant professor of finance at the American University in Dubai, said while the UAE could see some outflow of foreign capital, the country’s economy remains on a strong footing.
“A temporary stock market closure will have a limited impact on long-term economic variables, provided the fundamentals remain strong,” Aoun told Al Jazeera.
“In the UAE case, it’s a precautionary intervention, and not a sign of structural weakness.”
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city state’s central bank and financial regulator, has joined forces with major financial institutions and FinTechs to release a white paper aimed at keeping AI agents in finance operating within safe limits.
The paper, called Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR), lays out an industry-built framework designed to let AI agents perform financial tasks in a manner that is safe, secure and dependable. It has been produced under BuildFin.ai, the MAS programme that backs the responsible creation and rollout of AI tools across the financial sector.
The push comes as AI agents take on more autonomous work at a pace that makes hands-on human oversight impractical. In response, firms require real-time controls that keep agent behaviour inside the mandates, policies and risk limits they have defined. SAFR answers this with a series of governance checkpoints that check and log each action an agent proposes before that task is carried out.
The framework extends the AI Risk Management toolkit created through MAS’ Project Mindforge, concentrating on how protections can be put into practice at the moment an agent acts. The white paper maps out how measures such as policy bound execution, real time validation, auditability and interoperability can be woven into system operations, giving institutions the confidence to deploy agents consistently.
Industry participants have already tested SAFR in several settings. These include agent-assisted payments and treasury work, where agents handle routine transactions inside set mandates to cut friction and lift efficiency; wealth management and advisory processes, where agents examine documents and produce structured assessments within tightly defined task limits to speed up compliance reviews; and client engagement, where agents create insights and draft materials within approved content boundaries so staff can serve clients more productively.
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Talking about finances can be stressful, but it’s even more stressful if you’re not sure what advice is good and what advice might put you in a worse position than you started in.
Recently, a Reddit user who goes by market_vision1 asked, “What is the worst financial advice people still repeat?” I took out a little pen and paper while I was reading through these, like, “Lemme write that down. And that. Oh! And that, too!” I’m curious what you think, though. Are all of these things we should avoid financially?
1. “One of the more damaging ideas out there is ‘Oh, you’re young, don’t worry about money, just go have fun and worry about it when you are older.’ Of course, the number one regret I hear from clients nearing retirement is that they wish they had just started saving when they were younger.”
—u/hems86
2. “The ‘tax bracket’ myth should be illegal. My uncle turned down a $10K raise because he thought he’d ‘lose money.’ He literally paid $10,000 to avoid $2,200 in taxes. That’s not a tax strategy. That’s a $7,800 donation to the Dumba— Fund, and he’s the chair.”
—u/Serious_Cress5040
Related: “31 Things Only Super Wealthy People Can Buy That You Probably Don’t Even Know Exist”
3. “People living outside of their means and not realizing it. They say things like, ‘You deserve X, don’t settle for less.’ Most of the people I see who are broke are not 100% victims of the system. The majority of people waste their money on dumb stuff that they can’t afford. They’ll tell me they’ve cut out all unnecessary spending, but when I look at their actual expenses, I see otherwise. Spending $800 a month on DoorDash, financing a new car with a $900 monthly payment, going on international vacations, spending 70% of their income on rent in a fancier apartment when there are options for cheaper living.”
—u/hems86
4. “I’m a financial planner, and some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard is ‘Don’t pay off your credit cards in full. Carrying a balance on your credit card builds your credit; paying it off every month hurts your score.’ People say this to me all the time when I ask why they carry a balance on their card with 25% interest when they have more than enough to pay it off.”
—u/hems86
5. “It’s not so much advice as it is a financial choice. I know people who are taking out 96-month loans on cars they never should’ve considered in the first place, just because they can make the car note when it’s stretched over eight years. They never considered the interest on the loan plus the rate cars depreciate and are befuddled when they can’t afford to trade it in.”
Finance
I’m a 25-year-old grad student on a budget. I’ve struggled to accept financial help from my Boomer and Gen X friends.
In August, I quit my steady job as a New York City public high school teacher to start a full-time graduate program in Manhattan. I worried about the choice not only because I loved my work with the kids, but also because I had traded a consistent paycheck and affordable health insurance for tens of thousands of dollars in tuition.
When I was teaching, I prepared for the cost by scrimping to save every cent I could. But my account balance still wouldn’t fully cover two years of school and living expenses.
Throughout my savings journey, I learned a lot of lessons, especially from my older friends.
I jumped into major money-saving mode
As a result, I redoubled my frugal efforts. I made a rule that I wouldn’t eat out or order takeout unless it was someone’s birthday. I asked to meet people in parks rather than restaurants and suggested $5 happy-hour spots from a meticulously crafted list on my phone.
On rare occasions when I dined out, I looked at the prices before deciding what to order and pored over the bill with a calculator.
It worked. While it was still difficult to watch my savings dwindle — buoyed occasionally by small deposits from part-time jobs — I kept my costs (relatively) low for a 20-something in the city. Most friends understood my restrictions or were in similar situations.
I worried when my older friends routinely paid for me
But this approach didn’t work as well with my five older friends from my intergenerational writer’s group. We’d been meeting weekly on Zoom for several years when we started visiting each other in our home states across the country. As women in their 40s and 60s in dual-income households with established careers, they understandably gravitated toward nicer places where the cheapest cocktail cost $20. My dive bars with weirdly stained walls weren’t going to cut it.
When I visited two of these friends in Chicago, I anticipated that we’d go to swanky spots and saved up for weeks, cutting out anything nonessential from my grocery list — chocolate-covered pretzels, bananas, frozen fried rice.
But when I offered to chip in for our multi-course dinners or luxury spa day, they brushed me off.
I was grateful for their generosity, yet overcome with guilt. They had contributed so much to our time together. I didn’t want to be a freeloader, the friend who couldn’t hold up her end of the deal. How could I pay them back and show my appreciation?
At the end of the trip, my friend Andrea, 46, and I ate lunch in a diner in the Gold Coast. I made one last offer to Zelle her. In response, she said something that stuck with me.
“When I was in my 20s, people helped me,” she told me with an easy smile. “When you’re 40, just pay it forward by buying a younger woman dinner.”
Her wisdom helped me slowly release my anxiety
I mulled over her words on the plane home. I was surprised that her view of the situation differed so much from mine, and relieved she didn’t see me as taking advantage of her. Yet it was still hard to fully let go of the weight in my chest — the feeling of being indebted to someone’s kindness, of accepting a gift while knowing you can’t reciprocate.
Months later, my 64-year-old friend from my writer’s group visited from Florida. We went out for coffee, and I thought to myself, Okay, now this I can afford. But when I offered to cover or at least split it, she waved me off, saying, “My treat.”
I thought of Andrea’s words and told myself, She’s being nice. Don’t worry about it.
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.
A while later, when another friend visited from Washington, she paid most of our checks at the bars and restaurants we visited. Though I felt a twinge of the usual panic at first, by our second day together, I was able to let it go. As we wandered through the Upper West Side, the tightness in my chest lifted, leaving only gratitude that she was here.
I do plan on paying it forward
Andrea was right, I realized. Helping each other was what friends did, and they clearly weren’t bothered by it. Sure, I wasn’t paying for lavish things or hosting people, but I shouldn’t let my own hangups affect our time together, which always produces some of my favorite memories.
Eventually, I’ll be able to do what they’ve done for me for another woman, who can then help someone else.
Instead of worrying, now I let my friends’ kindness bring us together and smile, knowing that every time I pay for a 20-something woman in the future, I’ll think of them.
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