DUBAI, June 25: UAE stockbroker Emaar Financial Services on Saturday launched the first Internet trading service for shares listed on Dubai’s stock exchange and opened a trading room for women.

It makes the market more diversified, Vice-president Mohammed Ali Al Hashimi told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference.

At the moment a couple of major players could move this market substantially. If there are a number of small investors, you have more balance, a more level playing field.

The Dubai bourse index has more than doubled this year as share trading has become increasingly popular, particularly among UAE nationals.

Analysts say the market is dominated by a handful of large investors, particularly high net worth individuals, with portfolios worth hundreds of millions of dirhams.

Hashimi said he wants to encourage smaller investors with tens or hundreds of thousands of dirhams, including foreigners, to become more active.

He said there are many ‘lost trades’ by small investors in Dubai who could not get to speak to their brokers in time to buy or sell shares.

Emaar Financial Services, launched in February, is a joint-venture between Emaar Properties and Amlak Finance.

On Saturday the brokerage firm officially opened its Dubai headquarters, which includes a trading room for women investors, staffed by female brokers.

The number of women investors in this market is growing on a daily basis, said Hashimi. But many of them do not want to go the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), where there are big crowds of men. The DFM has recently expanded its women only section, and we are responding to the same demand.

The fees for online brokerage services will be the same as conventional brokers’ fees, which are fixed by UAE regulators as a percentage of traded value.

Emaar Financial Services is run according to Islamic principles. As such, investors cannot use the brokerage to trade conventional banking stocks, which Islamic scholars say are too heavily leveraged, or companies involved in ‘un-Islamic’ business sectors. —Reuters