Gulf Markets Tank:

The Saudi market continued its sharp decline on Saturday (Nov. 4), the first trading day of the week. The market index is now close to testing its lowest level of two years, as it reached 8652 before closing at 8793, within easy reach of the 8500 level of January 2005.  The decline has been across the board, with few exceptions. Some traders claim that large funds are dumping ‘quality’ shares that are normally part of their core investments, and these include telecoms, industrials and financials. Among the new measures demanded by traders are easing rules for margin lending, as well as activating the role of market makers. Others attribute part of the decline to the delay by some listed companies of implementing new accounting and disclosure requirements of the Exchange Authority that were initiated on January 2006. The Saudi market settled on a decline of nearly 6% for the day. Other GCC markets also declined slightly for the day, and the trend continued on Sunday even though the Saudi market recorded a slight gain.

Fundamentalist Fiesta in Tehran:

In Tehran thousands of demonstrators, led by some Iranian politicians and other such exciting personalities, commemorated the 1979 attack and hostage-taking at the old United States embassy. The fundamentalists who rule Iran apparently consider this one of the major achievements of the revolution. If there are other major achievements of the Islamic Revolution over the past 27 years, they must be well hidden and kept as state secrets, for they are not apparent to most others, and they are especially not apparent to the Iranian people. To cap the festivities, some mullahs and demonstrators burned the American and Israeli flags, as well as some unflattering effigies of President Bush. It is understood that the American and Israeli flags are now the second and third most popular flags in Iran, after the national colors of course. It is reported that the same two flags are also quite popular in certain regions of Pakistan as well. In the end the revelers in Tehran all sang a rendition of the mullahs’ all-time favorite hit “Marq bar Amrika, Marg bar Israel…Death to America, death to Israel.”  The Iranian and Arab media did not report if they sang it to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

Saddam Sentenced in Baghdad:
Saddam Husseim was sentenced to death today. Kurdish towns were quietly relieved, Shia' towns erupted in celebrations, and Sunni towns erupted in angry protests. Looks like a very regional and con-federalist set of reactions.
 

Cheers

Mohammed