Managers upbeat about Qatar, UAE despite rally

The announcement by MSCI last June that it would upgrade Qatar and the UAE from frontier to emerging market status set both equity indices into hyperdrive. In the following 12 months they gained close to 100% and 50%, respectively, as passive and active managers steadily built up positions ahead of the formal transition, at the end of May this year. As a result, when the May deadline came and went, many passive funds were already fully invested, disappointing those investors ant…