One of the steepest falls in emerging market history has given millions of Gulf investors painful, first-hand experience of the old market adage about what goes up, must come down.

Yet long after overheating Gulf markets began responding to gravity – Dubai is now over 50 per cent down from its peak last year and Riyadh down over 40 per cent since February – the average retail investor in the region is still struggling to make sense of it all.