July 2026 in review · through the Abu Dhabi expat lens

The Month in Numbers

All monthly moves measured month-end close to month-end close (30 Jun → 31 Jul — the last close on or before each month-end), from Yahoo Finance daily closes. Instruments trading through the weekend (Bitcoin) use the same marks.

US Markets

The customers rose. The suppliers fell.

The index says nothing happened. The S&P 500 finished July down 0.1%, with its highest close of the month, 7,575, on 10 July and its lowest, 7,316, on the 29th. It has still not regained its highest close of the year, 7,609.78 on 2 June.

Underneath, the AI trade split in two. The companies buying the equipment rose: Microsoft 24.6%, Amazon 14.0%, Apple 6.8%. Meta was near flat at −1.2%. The companies making it fell hard: the Philadelphia semiconductor index 20.6%, Micron 28.7%, SK Hynix 35.2%, Samsung 21.4%, ASML 17.0%. Nvidia sells the chips and did not fall: it ended the month unchanged, at +0.3%. The indices of the countries that make the hardware fell too — the Kospi 22.2%, the Nikkei 8.1%, Taiwan 6.5%.

Two China stories landed on Monday 27 July. The memory maker CXMT closed its first day in Shanghai up nearly 466%, at 49 yuan a share and a market value of about 3.3 trillion yuan — past Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's 2.6 trillion, CNBC reported, making it the most valuable company listed in China. Its listing raised 57.92 billion yuan, or $8.6 billion. The same day, The Information reported that an unnamed Chinese company had begun making an immersion deep-ultraviolet lithography machine. ASML dominates that market, and in CNBC's account no other company had been able to replicate what it does — “which is why it is a big deal that a Chinese firm has reportedly done so”.

The caveats are worth as much as the headline. CNBC's explainer notes that deep-ultraviolet machines make the less advanced chips, and that the leading edge is made with extreme-ultraviolet tools, which this is not. The reported plan is 5 units this year, against ASML's own stated capacity of around 130 immersion machines in 2026.

The other thing that moved in July was the price of longer-term money. The Federal Open Market Committee held its target range at 3.50–3.75% on 29 July, by 9 votes to 3, with the three dissenters each preferring a quarter-point rise. The ten-year Treasury yield went from 4.42% to 4.75% over the month — the highest of the 145 daily closes so far this year. The thirty-year went from 4.90% to 5.28%. Across 9,181 daily closes back to 1990, it last closed higher on 6 July 2007.

The view from here
The Central Bank of the UAE held its base rate at 3.65% the same day, following the Fed. In its own standing wording, that rate “provides an effective floor for overnight money market interest rates in the UAE”. What moved in July was the rate no committee sets: what the US government pays to borrow for ten and thirty years.

European Markets

Europe made its whole month in three days.

The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 1.2% in July and the CAC 40 1.3%, against the S&P's −0.1%. All of it came in the first three sessions. The Stoxx closed at 652.77 on 3 July, its highest close on record and 1.7% above where it started the month; it never got back there, finishing July at 649.19. The one chip name among the European stocks we measured, ASML, fell 17.0%.

TotalEnergies rose 12.0% and Shell 15.4%, in a month when Brent rose 23.6%. Capgemini rose 17.3% and Kering 15.1%. The largest fall among the European names we measured was Universal Music, at 20.3%.

The European Central Bank left its three key rates unchanged on 23 July, with the deposit rate at 2.25%. It does not meet on policy in August; its next decision comes on 10 September, from a meeting hosted by the Bundesbank in Berlin.

The view from here
The dirham follows the dollar, so a European gain arrives here with the currency attached. In July the Stoxx rose 1.2% and the euro 0.9% against the dollar — together worth about 2% to a dirham earner, before dividends and costs. The S&P, in dollars, made roughly nothing over the same month.

Abu Dhabi Real Estate

The pull-back was almost all one island.

Abu Dhabi's tracked districts sold 17% fewer homes in July than in June. Developers' own off-plan sales fell more than twice as fast — down 40%, to 856, the fewest in any month since May 2025.

Almost all of that was Al Reem. The island's developer sales fell by two-thirds, and that one island accounts for 97% of the drop across every district we track. June had been Al Reem's busiest month in our records.

Everywhere else held up. Three of the five districts we track in detail sold more off-plan than in June — Yas, Al Raha Beach and Saadiyat. Only Al Reem and Hudayriyat sold fewer.

Yas took up most of the slack. Its share of the off-plan homes developers sold across those districts doubled, from 15% to 30%. Yas Park Place was the emirate's largest project of the month by both homes sold and money taken, at a median 45% above the emirate's — and every one of its sales came from the developer.

The other side of the market moved the opposite way. Off-plan resales more than doubled, taking 34% of all off-plan sales against 13% in June — the highest share since August 2021.

July 2026, ADREC residential registrations across the tracked districts.

Aldar drew the next Yas map inside the month: on 10 July it unveiled Yas Point, a AED 6 billion waterfront development on the northern side of the island, with 1,600 branded residences. Al Raha Beach, meanwhile, had its best month in our records, on both sales and value. And the official half-year figures landed in the same month: ADREC put total property transactions at AED 117 billion for the first half of 2026, up 112% on the year.

On the Radar · August 2026

▸  12 Aug — July US consumer prices, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at 8:30am New York time.
▸  26 Aug — Nvidia reports its second quarter of fiscal 2027, for the three months ended 26 July.
▸  27–29 Aug — The Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium. This year's topic is “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy.”
▸  Not in August — The ECB holds no policy meeting this month. Its next decision is on 10 September.

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Methodology. Market levels and monthly moves are measured month-end close to month-end close (30 Jun → 31 Jul, using the last close on or before each month-end) from Yahoo Finance daily closes; other windows (intraday, source dashboards) may differ. Abu Dhabi transaction figures are computed from ADREC registration data for residential sales in July 2026; registration dates lag sale dates and recent months may revise upward. Linked items cite their sources. This brief is educational commentary for information only — it is not investment advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.

Prepared by The Market Watcher · Abu Dhabi
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