Tadawul All-Share Index

index to a fresh eight-year high, with Telecom Egypt and Global Telecom Holding each jumping to their 10 percent daily limits.

Overall, many investors consider currency weakness a positive for the stock market in the short term because it makes prices more attractive for foreign investors, and may drive local funds into stocks as a hedge against inflation.

“The dollar rate is keeping up the appetite” for stocks among foreign funds, said Wafik Dawood, portfolio manager at Compass Capital. closed for a public holiday on Sunday, rose 0.5 percent but finished well below its intra-day high. Qatari Investors Group was the top performer, jumping 9.9 percent.

On Thursday Qatar published a 2017 state budget that projected a deficit of 28.3 billion riyals ($7.8 billion), much smaller than the originally projected 2016 deficit, and total spending of 198.4 billion riyals, down from 202.5 billion.

Although that is slightly contractionary, it is less so than the 2016 budget, and the government plans to increase capital spending next year. It did not announce any major new austerity measures; the bud- get’s conservative oil price assumption of $45 a barrel suggests the government has plenty of room to meet its targets next year.

Dubai’s main index lost 0.6 percent to 3,532 points in a second consecutive day of thin trade, retreating further from technical resistance on the August peak of 3,624 points, which it tested and failed to break decisively last week. Emaar Properties lost 0.9 percent.

Blue chips were weak in Abu Dhabi, where the index slipped 0.4 percent; telecommunications operator Etisalat ETEL.AD lost 1.6 percent.