An Investigation Stock Price Index Convergence in Middle East stock markets: Cluster Analysis Approach

The capital market in each country is considered as the most important part of the economy and its changes and fluctuation can reflect the full-fledged economic structure of each economy. The study of the global trend of convergence of stock markets indicates the interdependence of the economies of each other and the mobility of capital between countries. The stock market index reflects the trend of stock markets movements and it show the changes in the economy. In this study, the hypothesis of the convergence of the index of prices of stock markets in Middle East countries during the period from January 2007 to February 2017 has been investigated using cluster analysis method. The results show that the stock markets do not form a convergent cluster. However, there are two converging clusters between stock markets but the Jordanian stock market is not in any cluster and forms a non-convergent cluster