Impact of oil price volatility on Gulf Cooperation Council stock markets' return

This paper investigates the short and long-term determinants of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock markets' volatility. Since GCC countries are major suppliers of oil in world energy markets, their stock markets are likely to be susceptible to change in oil prices. Given that change in oil prices influence observable factors in GCC economies, we show in this paper that unobservable speculative factors drive short term stock market returns. The influence of oil price change on GCC stock markets returns is evidenced in the long-term. 1 Long term is defined here as the period of time required for the effect of oil price changes to work out its way to influence major macroeconomic indicators that influence profitability of firms traded in GCC stock markets.