UAE retail investors spent the second quarter of 2026 leaning into the same big idea that has driven markets for two years: artificial intelligence. New data from trading and investing platform eToro shows AI was again the dominant theme in local portfolios between April and June — even as investors went bargain-hunting in crypto-linked names and started placing early bets on commercial space.
The standout mover was Wix.com, the website-building company that has repositioned itself around AI-generated sites. eToro says the number of its UAE users holding Wix jumped 139% over the quarter — the biggest increase on its list of local risers. Chipmaker Micron Technology, a direct beneficiary of surging demand for AI memory, climbed 65%.
Crypto’s volatility, meanwhile, looks to have been treated as an opportunity rather than a warning. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin-mining and immersion-cooling play, saw UAE holders rise 75% — a sign traders were buying weakness rather than fleeing it. The theme is baked into the title eToro gave its own report, which name-checks the “crypto dip.”
From chips to rockets
The more surprising shift sits beyond AI and crypto. eToro flags Rocket Lab among the quarter’s top risers, pointing to growing appetite for commercial space companies — a sector that spent years as a speculative fringe but is increasingly treated as an investable industry. It is a small but telling signal of where risk-tolerant investors think the next decade of growth might come from.
The full release ranks the 10 biggest risers and fallers among UAE investors alongside the 10 most-held stocks on the platform, with commentary from Nagham Hassan, a market analyst at eToro MENA, on the sentiment driving the moves.
The usual caveats apply. eToro’s figures reflect activity among its own users — a self-selecting, generally younger and more risk-friendly cohort — rather than the UAE market as a whole, and a jump in “holders” measures popularity, not performance. Retail enthusiasm for a theme has a long history of peaking close to the top. Even so, the Q2 snapshot is a useful read on how the Emirates’ fast-growing base of everyday investors is positioning: still betting on AI, comfortable buying crypto on the way down, and starting to look up at space.
