Off the beaten track

Good morning, wonderful people, and welcome to the last working morning of the week (and the last full workweek of the month, as most countries in our neck of the woods are in for a long weekend to celebrate Prophet Mohamed’s birthday). We’re sending you off into the weekend looking at an often overlooked part of the map when it comes to equity stories — let’s talk about Tunis, Amman, and Baghdad.

While most spent the summer watching Gulf indices with varying degrees of concern, these three markets (which rarely make an allocation shortlist) are posting enviable return rates. Our Lede this morning gets into what’s actually driving all three markets, which have outperformed largely because there aren’t that many people or securities in them to begin with. In a nutshell: Outperformance and liquidity are two very different things.

A bright spot in an otherwise struggling tourism and travel sector (as we note in our Tourism section, below): Red Sea Global cut the ribbon on Wednesday on Rosewood Amaala, a luxury resort with 110 keys and 26 branded residences across 40 hectares.

Next week’s news to watch starts in Paris, where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives for a two-day visit on Sunday built around the first-ever meeting of the Franco-Saudi Strategic Partnership Council, with a sit-down with PM Lecornu on Monday and the Esports World Cup closing ceremony — staged outside the kingdom for the first time — folded in. That same day in Washington, the White House will unveil what it’s billing as the “toughest” sanctions yet on Iran (more on that in this morning’s War Watch, below). And on Friday, Kevin Warsh gives his first Jackson Hole keynote as Fed chair, 19 days out from the September FOMC. –Salma