Kuwait’s unregulated stock market, whose collapse caused the 1982 financial crash, was called Souk Al-Manakh.
Souk Al-Manakh operated alongside Kuwait’s official stock exchange and became a center for speculative trading in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Investors commonly traded postdated checks and shares in companies that were not listed on the official market. Easy credit and rapidly rising prices encouraged participants to take on extraordinary levels of debt.
The bubble broke in 1982 when confidence weakened and traders could no longer settle their obligations. The resulting chain of defaults created one of the largest financial crises in modern history relative to the size of the affected economy. Kuwait’s government intervened, and the crisis caused extensive losses for banks, investors, and businesses.
Souk Al-Manakh is sometimes confused with the Kuwait Stock Exchange. The former was the informal speculative market; the latter was the regulated exchange operating in Kuwait.