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Welcome to this week’s Fortune Gulf Brief. Regular readers may notice a different author byline today. That is because Melissa is taking a well-earned break, although, knowing journalists, probably with one eye on her phone and what is happening in the Gulf. Normal service resumes next week.

Until then, I’m Inzamam Rashid, an international journalist and broadcaster based in Dubai, and I’ll be your guide to the region this week.

There is no shortage of developments to cover. Donald Trump’s pronouncements are increasingly becoming trading signals for investors in the UAE, while Washington’s new economic offensive against Iran comes as Tehran’s currency hits a record low and one of its most important trading partners shuts the door.

We’ll also be covering:

Iran’s currency crisis deepens as UAE lifeline closes

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince goes to Paris and leaves with billions in deals

Pop stars pull out of Abu Dhabi, but the F1 is staying put

So with Melissa temporarily swapping Gulf Brief for the beach, let’s get into it.

Retail trading activity in Dubai has shown significant growth in response to President Donald Trump’s market-moving pronouncements and swings in gold and oil prices, underscoring how closely local investors are now watching global headlines.

In the first half of 2026, the Dubai Financial Market’s trading value surged 40% year-on-year to $32.5 billion, while Abu Dhabi’s exchange recorded $46.6 billion in trades.

There may be another explanation for Dubai’s retail trading boom beyond Donald Trump, war and a very strong year for gold: the kind of people who move there.

“Everyone that moves to the UAE is a risk taker by definition,” Tarik Chebib, Capital.com’s Middle East CEO, told me when we sat down to discuss why trading volumes in the region have surged.

Dubai has spent the past decade attracting entrepreneurs, financiers, executives and increasingly wealthy expats from around the world. Many have already taken one major financial gamble by packing up their lives and moving to the Gulf, and the lack of tax is, of course, another major attraction.

Chebib argues that this has helped create an unusually receptive audience for retail investing. When he arrived in the UAE 11 years ago, he said, conversations about brokerage accounts were relatively rare. Today, most clients arriving at Capital.com have traded before.

Covid accelerated the change. Chebib said more people began thinking: “I want to manage my own money. I don’t want it to be sitting in a bank anymore. I need to prepare for my future.”

Another very Gulf-specific factor is also at work. For many expats who make up the UAE’s workforce, the traditional financial safety nets found in parts of Europe are less extensive.

“Here, you’ve got to figure it out yourself,” Chebib said. For some, he argues, trading has become one way of doing that.

That does not mean everyone in Dubai has suddenly become a day trader. But the numbers suggest this is no longer a niche pastime. Chebib says the UAE retail trading market is now comparable in size to Singapore, a remarkable shift for a market that barely registered in international research five years ago.

And traders in the UAE are not short of things to bet on. This year alone, the focus has shifted from gold to oil during the war, to AI, and to U.S. equities. Nasdaq and S&P 500 products remain particularly popular, while Chebib says Gulf traders are already positioning themselves for what comes next.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump. His statements are now moving this increasingly sophisticated — and increasingly heavily invested — audience almost instantly.

Read my full story here on why Trump is becoming one of the Gulf’s most powerful trading signals for the Middle East.

Inzamam Rashid

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com