Whether you’re an Emirati or an expat, the journey to building wealth inevitably starts by learning how to invest money in the UAE.
However, deciding on the best investment strategy in this country can be a challenge that individuals can rarely handle without conducting thorough research.
Often, this lack of guidance leads to some very common and painful errors:
If you are searching for smart ways on how to invest money in the UAE, this article will help provide a comprehensive guide to set up your wealth-building know-how.
In this guide, we will outline a definitive set of rules for how to invest money in the UAE, written with everyone in mind. The chapters of this guide include:
In particular, this guide will take an in-depth look to cover 5 of the most popular investment tools in the UAE:
To jump directly to that section, you can click here. We’ll explore each of these options and explain why they are the best place to start for those learning how to invest money in the UAE.
We will also introduce you to a simple, effective, and low-risk way to grow your money over the long term using new digital financial tools available.
Let’s begin.
[Need help investing in the UAE? Sarwa offers professional financial advisory that makes investing easy and affordable using smart technology. Learn more by subscribing to our newsletter, or schedule a free call with a wealth advisor that can help put your investment goals on track.]
The absence of an investment plan is the first problem many people who desire to invest money in the UAE face.
As it has been said, “he who fails to plan, plans to fail.”
Before you kickstart your investments, you need to create an easily doable investment plan to guide your wealth-making decisions. Whether you are looking for the best investment in UAE for expats or the best investment opportunities for an Emirati, it must all begin with a plan.
Many of those who lose money in poor investments do so because there is no overarching plan guiding them.
They jump into an investment because everyone else is doing it. Or they stay away from an investment because none of their friends are in it.
So before you even think about how to invest money in the UAE, whether you only have money for a small investment in Dubai, or large money for more significant investment, or even sudden wealth from a windfall, we need to begin by outlining steps for solid investment planning.
How do you do that?
Below are four essential steps.
Begin by understanding your current situation. The investment goals and choices of a 25-year-old who is just entering into the workforce will differ from that of a 55-year-old who has 10 more years to retire.
Aside from age, consider the current investments you have.
Current investments could include land, a rental property, or shares in a company.
Create an outline of your existing assets. Before you can go where you want, you need to understand where you are.
Furthermore, make a list of all your debts. If you owe money on a mortgage, a business loan, a car loan, or your credit cards, list out all of them.
Why do you want to invest?
For some people, they want to gain financial independence so they can retire when they want.
Others want to grow their wealth so they can leave an estate (inheritance) for their children.
Yet others invest so they can finally start a business of their dreams.
Here, you need to decide what your investment goals are.
Once you define your investment goals, turn those goals into clear objectives. An objective can be defined as a SMART goal — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
I want to be worth AED10,000,000 in the next 25 years is a SMART goal. I want to retire with AED15,000,000 and leave AED10,000,000 for my children is another SMART goal.
Now ask yourself what are your investment goals.
Now that you have your goals, you should move towards the next step to achieve them — creating a budget.
Unfortunately, many people jump into researching how to invest money in the UAE when they have not even completed this crucial step.
To outline your budget, financial planners often recommend the budgeting practice known as the 50:30:20 rule, whereby you allocate to spend 50% of your income on essentials, 30% on discretionary spending, and save/invest the remaining 20%.
Choose a budget formula that works best for you. However, understand that the best way to meet your investment goals and objectives is to set aside a fixed percentage every month dedicated solely to investments — we call this the “future you” portion of the budget.
Doing so helps to build the habit of spending less than you earn. Furthermore, you will enjoy the benefit of compounding. Investing AED5,000 every month is more than investing AED60,000 at the end of the year.
Create your budget and decide on how much to invest every month.
Before considering the best investments in the UAE (where to invest money), you should learn how to start an emergency fund.
An emergency fund is money set aside to cater for unplanned and unexpected expenses resulting from job loss, medical crisis, natural disasters, unexpected repairs, etc.
If you start investing without an emergency fund, you may end up liquidating your investments when emergencies arise (a terrible situation).
Set aside six months’ worth of your living expenses in a savings account, money market account, or money market mutual fund account.
For emergency funds, the primary factor is the ease of access (liquidity) rather than profitability. Put your emergency funds where you can access it when (and only when) emergencies arise.
[Need advice for how to manage your finances? Sarwa is a professional digital financial adviser that can help you better plan your investment goals.]
When considering the best UAE investment opportunities, it’s important to put a heavy focus on your long-term investing goals.
People who invest with a short-term, quick-profit mindset end up burning themselves.
However, we’d also like to make a distinction here between investing and savings. We are not classifying accounts such as savings, fixed deposits, and certificates of deposits as investing.
“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case,” says Robert Allen, an author of bestselling personal finance books.
Warren Buffett, the investor legend and billionaire, echoes Robert’s sentiment. “Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value,” says Buffett.
Savings accounts don’t offer the returns and long-term growth potential you need to build wealth and achieve your investment goals.
With many banks offering less than 1% interest rate on savings accounts, this option presents a clear disadvantage for long-term growth goals. Actually, if inflation rates rise significantly, you may even lose your money in real terms.
That being said, you should create your emergency fund in savings accounts, fixed deposits, and CDS, but you must not invest in them if you want to make your money work for you over the long haul.
Now that you know how to create an investment plan, the next thing is to consider where to invest your money.
Here are the five UAE investment opportunities all intelligent investors should intimately know about.
A stock is a portion of a company’s capital that individual and institutional investors can own.
When you purchase a company’s stock, you own a portion of the company. There are two ways to make money from stock ownership:
If you had bought a thousand shares for AED60,000, your shares are now worth AED150,000. What did you need to do? Sit tight and be patient. As the company grows, you enjoy the ride.
For example, if you bought a share of Emirates NBD PJSC on January 3, 2000, at AED2.176, you have more than quadrupled your investment now that it sells for AED9.4 (as of time of writing).
[Want to read more about investing stocks in Arabic? Read this Arabic-language article on stocks.]
To invest in the UAE stock market, you will need a stockbroker, who will provide you access to any of the three stock exchanges in the UAE — Dubai Financial Market (DFM), NASDAQ Dubai, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX).
A stockbroker is an intermediary that facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers on stock exchanges. As an individual, you cannot buy or sell stocks in the UAE stock market (or any others) without a broker. Therefore, learning how to invest in UAE stock market begins with choosing the right broker.
Any broker operating in the UAE will give you access to any of the three UAE stock exchanges above. However, if your financial goals require you to buy foregin US stocks like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc., you will need a broker that can grant you access to international stock exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ.
Sarwa is an example of a platform operating in the U.A.E. and providing access to international markets. With Sarwa Trade, you get the option to choose between thousands of ETFs and stocks on the U.S. stock exchanges, providing you with some of the best investment options.
In essence, while it is good to know how to invest in UAE stock market, you can do better by also expanding your reach to international stock markets.
[For more on stock exchanges and how they impact your investment decisions, read, “What Is A Stock Exchange? Everything You Need To Know”]
A bond is a debt instrument that governments and corporate companies use to raise money. For our purpose, there are three types of bonds:
You can make money from bonds in two ways:
Bonds are generally issued for a long period of time.
Unlike stocks that you can own forever (provided the company does not repurchase them), you can only hold bonds for a predefined period.
Bonds provide a consistent stream of income for a certain amount of years, such as 10-year and 20-year bonds. You can also earn on them by selling them at a higher price before maturity.
Bonds are considered less risky compared to other investments, and typically used as a counterbalance to stock investments.
“Every portfolio benefits from bonds; they provide a cushion when the stock market hits a rough patch,” says Suze Orman, founder of Suze Orman Financial Group. “Every portfolio benefits from bonds; they provide a cushion when the stock market hits a rough patch.”
However, their return is not as high as stocks: less risk equals smaller returns.
When it comes to investing in corporate bonds, investors should conduct diligent research to understand if the company has a low-risk profile, as defined by bond rating agencies.
For those without the time or skills to evaluate the stock market (and that is most of us), stocks and bonds are also available for purchase through mutual funds.
A mutual fund pools money from various individual investors and invests them in stocks, bonds, and other fixed-income securities under a fund manager’s supervision.
The fund manager is an expert who understands the market and has the experience and skills to choose individual stocks or bonds.
By pooling a large sum of money from different individuals, mutual funds offer diversification as they can invest in more companies.
When someone purchases a mutual fund, they own a portion of the mutual fund rather than the individual investments (the mutual fund operates as a company). In other words, the shareowner doesn’t own the stocks or bonds the mutual fund purchases; instead, they own the mutual fund itself.
How do mutual funds make money?
As the mutual fund grows, the value of the share price grows.
There are different types of mutual funds based on how they trade and the investments they purchase.
Based on trade, there are:
Based on the philosophy of investing, there are:
Understanding the difference between active and passive investment is essential to your wealth-building journey.
Active investments (like actively managed mutual funds) promise you more returns for higher risk.
However, they have historically failed to deliver on the higher returns even though they are more expensive (higher fees and taxes). Consequently, active investments like actively-managed mutual funds are bad for your portfolio.
Similarly, active mutual funds are not transparent; they value flexibility more than transparency.
Therefore, it’s difficult to know the investments an active mutual fund is holding at a particular time. What they hold today can change before you wake up the next day.
Mutual funds in the UAE can be broadly classified into two categories: local and international. Local mutual funds invest in local securities available on DFM, ADX, or NASDAQ Dubai. Thirty-two of such mutual funds are currently listed on the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) website.
In addition, there are international mutual funds that invest in securities in international exchanges like the NYSE and NASDAQ.
Whether local or international, you must consider these four factors to determine the best mutual fund in the UAE:
The best mutual fund in the UAE will have investment objectives similar to yours, competitive performance (returns) and expense ratio, and excellent customer service.
ETFs are today’s go-to example of popular passive investments.
Over the past decade, ETFs have become among the most popular investment assets used to achieve diversification. By owning a share of one ETF, an investor gains exposure to numerous stocks or bonds within that basket.
For example, the iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF (IEFA) tracks a broad range of companies across many industries in markets across Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Far East. When an investor purchases a share of IEFA, they are purchasing exposure to large-, mid- and small-capitalization market equities across these regions.
While a single ETF offers a lot of diversification, purchasing many ETFs offers even more.
For example, an investor can purchase an ETF of US stocks together with an ETF of international stocks, an ETF of global REITs and an ETF of US bonds.
Apart from the diversification each ETF offers, you enjoy more diversification (and less portfolio risk) by combining various ETFs that spread across broadly different markets.
Instead of buying individual stocks, bonds, or REITs, the investors can use ETFs as part of a strategy to gain more diversification, and at a fraction of the cost.
[Want to read more about ETFs in Arabic? Read this Arabic-language article on ETFs.]
Since diversification is the same motive behind mutual funds, how then do they differ from ETFs?
There are at least five differences between the two:
Unlike actively-traded mutual funds, ETFs are more transparent. The investors know what basket of investments are in the fund and can be confident they won’t change overnight at the behest of a fund manager.
So why invest in ETFs and not just place all your money into an S&P 500 index fund?
First, index funds function similar to mutual funds that are passively traded. They are also passive investments like ETFs.
However, while ETFs are traded throughout the day on stock exchanges, you can only buy an index fund at the close of the market.
Below are some of the advantages of ETFs over index funds:
[For more on ETFs and why they have become a popular investment asset, read, “What Is An ETF? Everything You Need To Know (2021)”]
If you want to enjoy some of the benefits of the UAE real estate market without the downside of purchasing properties, you can invest in REITs (real estate investment trusts).
REITs are stocks of companies that purchase real estate properties (Equity REITs) or provide mortgage facilities to real estate investors (Mortgage REITs).
REITs are bought and sold like the shares of any other company. Instead of buying properties and managing them, investors hold the shares of companies who are investing in the market (including mortgage lenders).
REITs earn money through dividends and appreciation in the price of the REIT. They often pay regular dividends (they pay most of their income as dividends), providing a stable income source to the investor.
In a PWC report, the UAE had the fourth-highest annual dividend yield on REITs globally, eclipsing heavyweights like the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and Singapore.
REITs are great for those looking for how to invest money in the UAE and want to gain exposure to real estate without the risks of owning a property.
The best way to own REITs is by buying them as ETFs. Buying individual REITs has the same downside as buying individual stocks.
Just as there are equity ETFs and bond ETFs, there are also REITs ETFs that add to the diversification of your portfolio.
Having looked at the five common ways to invest money in the UAE, there are now four factors to consider when creating your investment plan around these asset classes.
Passive investing has at least four advantages over active investing: lesser fees, lesser taxes, long-term focus instead of market timing, and lesser risk. On the other hand, the advantage that active investing was supposed to deliver — outperforming the market — has been hard to come by.
For example, a 2020 S&P SPIVA report showed that over 86% of actively managed mutual funds in the US failed to outperform the market in the previous 20 years (2001-2020).
Source: Index Fund Advisors
If mutual funds, with the diversification they enjoy and the expert investment managers they employ, find it hard to outperform the market, it is even more difficult for individual investors.
Therefore, a smarter approach is to track the performance of the market through passive investing while enjoying lower fees, risk, taxes, and a long-term focus that is not disturbed by the noise of the stock market.
Confident of the superior value of passive investing, Warren Buffett placed a $1 million bet with the managers of Protege Partners in 2007 that a passively managed index fund will outperform a collection of hedge funds over the next decade. When the results came in, the S&P 500 Index Fund had returned 7.1% and the hedge funds 2.2%.
Interesting, right? In addition to all the advantages listed above, you have the bet of the Omaha Oracle himself as an added confirmation of the value of passive investing.
In summary, passive investing is the best way to invest money in Dubai. This is why we advise investors to buy passively-managed ETFs (see above for why ETFs are better than index funds though they are both passively managed).
You have probably heard the popular investment adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” It’s not enough to know where to invest (the best investments in the UAE), knowing how to combine these various investments in a way that minimises risk and maximises return is crucial to building wealth over the long term.
Putting your eggs in different baskets — that is, diversification — ensures that your overall investment risk is reduced. To understand how this risk reduction occurs, we’ll need to first review a bit about correlation and risk.
Correlation, risk, and diversification
When two investments are positively correlated (correlation coefficient is greater than 0), they move in the same direction — when one falls, the other falls with it. If this positive correlation is perfect (correlation coefficient is +1), the direction and magnitude of fall is the same — a 20% fall in Asset A causes a 20% fall in Asset B.
In contrast, if two assets are uncorrelated (correlation coefficient is 0), a fall in one asset does not affect the other.
Even better, if the two assets are negatively correlated (correlation coefficient is between 0 and -1), a fall in one asset will cause the other to rise. If the negative correlation is perfect ( correlation coefficient is -1), a 20% fall in one asset will cause the other to rise.
A portfolio of uncorrelated and negatively correlated assets reduces your risk since a fall in one asset won’t lead to a fall in another asset(s). Instead, the fall will either impact no other asset (uncorrelated) or cause the other asset(s) to rise in value.
There are four different ways to invest money using diversification:
Correlation Between Various Assets From 2012-2020
From 2012 to 2020, US bonds have shown a negative correlation (-0.25) to US stocks (S&P 500) while the US Real Estate has shown a near zero correlation (0.01) to the US bond market.
The first level of diversification is to combine stock ETFs, bond ETFs, and REITs ETFs in a portfolio.
In summary, the best investment in the UAE is a diversified portfolio that contains different assets that are uncorrelated or negatively correlated.
[To learn more about the importance of diversification, read, “Learning The Importance of Portfolio Diversification Can Prevent Huge Loss. Here’s Why.”]
The portfolio structure is how you divide your money among these investments.
Choose a portfolio structure based on your investment goals and current situation (time horizon). If you are closer to retirement, its advisable to have more bonds or bond funds. If you are young, you want more stocks or equity funds.
Investment in stocks, equity funds, and REITs will be higher if you are more risk-seeking than if you are risk-averse.
Since ETFs provide greater diversification, a more risk-seeking investor can devote more money to equity ETFs and less to bond ETFs, while the risk averse investor may do the opposite.
For example, Sarwa helps investors grow their wealth through ETFs. This below portfolio structure is designed for conservative (risk-averse) investors:
Compare the above with the portfolio structure they use for growth (growth-seeking) investors:
The difference in the above portfolios shows you how differences in investment goals and current situation affects your portfolio structure.
We can then modify our definition of the best investment in UAE: a diversified portfolio of uncorrelated or negatively correlated assets structured based on your investment goals and risk tolerance.
If you want to start creating such portfolios, Robo-advisors are the best.
Robo advisors help you construct a diversified portfolio of low-cost ETFs that maximize your returns for the level of risk you choose. They use a long-term, passive approach to investing that helps you achieve your investment goals without getting caught up with your emotions.
Robo-advisors are very cheap and they help you stay on course with your portfolio structure through periodic rebalancing.
[For more on how to build a diversified portfolio from scratch, read, “Building an investment portfolio from scratch.”]
Trading individual stocks often will result in higher fees. Ensure you hold your stocks for the long term to reduce the high fees that eat into your profit.
When it comes to minimizing your fees, nothing beats ETFs. While the average equity mutual fund charges 1.42% in annual fees, the average ETF charges 0.53% (and a large portion of ETFs charge less than that).
Because of the rapid effects of compounding, the best time to start your investment journey is today.
Sarwa can help you build an investment portfolio that best matches your personal profile and investment goals.
Thanks to innovative financial technology and our emphasis on the passive approach to investing, Sarwa is able to offer low fees and a good record of maximizing returns.
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