Arab stock markets plunged further this week under the pressure of bad news coming from world financial markets and retreating oil prices, dpa quoted financial analysts as saying today. "Regional markets are still fragile and responsive to bad news coming from western capitals where governments struggle tentatively to deal with the deepening recession," Wajdi Makhamreh, Chief Operating Officer of the Amman-based Sanabel International Holding, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "Arab stock markets are suffering from lack of vision and ambiguity with the correlation between the Arab area and global markets is increasingly becoming more clear," he added. Jordanian shares lost further ground this week amid a deepening liquidity shortage due to contraction in lending by banks, Makhamreh said. Kuwait's KSE all-share price index plunged 3.6 per cent this week, closing at 6,444 points from last week's close at 6,688 points. The benchmark price of the United Arab Emirates stock exchanges of Dubai and Abu Dhabi gained 1.9 per cent this week, to close at 2,486 points. Egypt's CASE 30 index, which measures the performance of the market's 30 most active stocks, gained 0.99 per cent on Thursday to close week at 3,598 points.
