baraka Opens UAE Stock Trading With DFM and ADX Listings

Eligible baraka customers can now buy and sell shares listed on the Dubai Financial Market and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange. The orders go through the same account customers already use for US stocks, so a single login covers a position in New York and one in Dubai. Local investments on the platform are funded in AED.

The brokerage operates from the Dubai International Financial Centre and is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority. Local shares are held in customers' names. Emirates NBD serves as custodian, which means the stock is registered to the account holder rather than pooled at the broker.

The two exchanges join a lineup that already includes US and UAE securities, options trading, Sharia-compliant investments and precious metals. baraka lists close to 10,000 assets in total, and the UAE additions sit inside that catalogue rather than on a separate platform.

Interest from baraka's users has clustered around a handful of names: Emaar Properties, ADNOC Gas and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank. The three cover real estate, energy and banking.

Feras Jalbout, founder and CEO of baraka, said adding DFM and ADX stocks lets customers build portfolios that reflect global opportunities and local economic champions.

Khalifa Rabba, chief operating officer of DFM, said the integration with baraka helps investors add local stocks into diversified portfolios alongside other asset classes.

Keeping a Dubai listing and a New York listing in one place sounds like a small convenience. For investors in the region it often has not been one. Local exposure has tended to require an account with a domestic broker, while international holdings sat somewhere else, and a portfolio split across two platforms makes small positions costly to hold and tedious to rebalance. Custody in the customer's own name also settles a question that surfaces early when someone buys a domestic share, namely who actually holds it.

baraka's customer base spans more than 100 nationalities. The service is open to GCC residents and citizens aged 18 and above, and is reached through the Apple App Store and Google Play.