Traders and investors across the Gulf and the rest of the Arab world stared at their screens in disbelief once again, as losses mounted and markets crashed for a fourth day.
Stock markets in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Egypt were eight to 10 percent lower, while markets in Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia suffered smaller losses. The Saudi exchange lost close to 10 percent at the opening bell, but had recovered to smaller losses, as the day wore on.
Beirut Daily Star newspaper columnist Rami Khouri painted a bleak picture of the economic situation in the Arab world in general. 
"We now are paying the consequences in terms of the full impact of the rather, I think, incompetent government policies, political and economic policies of the last 30, 40 years," he said, "which did not see the Arab world exploit the opportunity it had with tremendous oil income to diversify economies and provide domestic investment outlets for the Arab money that was sloshing around the Arab world."