The Development of Capital Markets in the Arab World: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This study aims to study capital markets, their functions and efficiency. The study specifically addressed Arab capital markets in terms of their characteristics, the challenges they face, and the opportunities that Arab markets have to develop themselves and keep pace with global capital markets. The study concluded with a set of results, the most important of which are: The legislative and legal environment in the Arab countries is still backward compared to the laws and legislation of the leading countries in the field of financial markets, and most Arab countries have sought to establish a public sector and invested huge sums of money in it, so it is necessary for the Arab countries to move to privatization through the privatization of companies. The public sector and transforming them into joint-stock companies listed on the financial markets, as this helps the financial markets to diversify their investments. Arab financial markets must also work to develop awareness among small savers and direct them towards forming investment portfolios that guarantee them acceptable income in exchange for less risk instead of investing their savings in One of the stocks, which exposes them to great risks in the future if the stock suffers a loss.            Most Arab countries have worked to establish a broad public sector, and despite all the potential that Arab countries have put in place to develop this sector, it has remained unable to play a real role in developing the economy. Arab financial markets suffer from the concentration of investments in certain sectors and therefore need to be diversified by increasing the number of companies listed on the financial market and diversifying the sectors to which these companies belong.