On Monday, the stock markets in the Gulf started with a mixed trend. On one side, where shares in the United Arab Emirates rose up, Kuwaiti stocks witnessed a fall, due to fears for the future of the already troubled investment companies.

The Kuwait Stock exchange is considered to be the second largest in the Arab world. However, on Monday, it lost 3.2 percent and for first time in 19 months, its index was trading below the 11,000-point mark.

On Monday, the Kuwaiti newspapers reported that government bail-out has been asked by the investment companies in order to help them to pay part of their estimated 22-billion-dollar debt. Global financial meltdown has adversely affected the local investment houses.

While the banks lost three percent, the index of the investment companies fell to more than four percent.

Faisal Hasan, who is the head of economic research at Kuwait's Global Investment House; reported, "What I see is a broad-based selling in the Kuwaiti market. News that investment companies face some problems has affected market sentiment."

When the week opened on Sunday, the Kuwaiti market closed down 2.7 percent. In spite of the efforts of the government of investing billions of dollars to buy shares since the beginning of October, the market has still dropped nearly15 percent.