The good news

Optimism has suddenly come on strong these past few weeks as battered markets stage what look like recoveries. Here's a list pulled quickly from Bloomberg of how the top  global markets have done YTD (the UAE isn't far behind - the MSCI's index for the country is up by around 32 per cent since February, though its YTD figure isn't so good):

Peru: +57%
Brazil: +46%
Jakarta: +44%
Shanghai: +42%
Taiwan: +42%
Russia: +40%
Chile: +30%
Norway: +28%
Venezuela: +26%
Hang Seng: +24%

The numbers look excellent, both in these emerging economies and the more developed ones. Just recently, the S&P 500 went into the black for 2009. Crazy. There have also been a bunch of positive stories on the global economy of late:

Bernanke: "pace of contraction may be slowing"
Fed's Yellen: there is a "basis for optimism"
Two US economic indicators turn positive
Australian central bank doesn't lower interest rates
US mutual funds are seeing positive fund flows

Still, we've got a long way to go. A rise in stock prices, expressed in percentage terms, has to be twice as big as the previous decline for a full recovery to take place. If you lose 50 per cent, you have to gain 100 per cent to get back to zero. We ain't there just yet, but the recent good news definitely comes as a welcome reprieve.