On Thursday, Dubai Financial Market (DFM), the Gulf’s only listed stock exchange, reported that it has on-boarded a new margin trading member, bringing the total number of brokers offering margin facilities to investors to 34 companies.

Sharjah Islamic Financial Services has been accredited today by DFM to provide margin trading in the Middle East’s largest financial centre.

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Dubai Financial Market reported last month a 60 percent drop in its Q2 2016 net profit as revenues fell to $27.3 million in the three months ending June 30.

As a qualified margin trading member, Sharjah Islamic is allowed to fund a percentage of the market value of traded securities, and secures as collateral for the same securities or any other collateral as required by the SCA’s license.

The DFM is regulated by the country’s main financial watchdog, the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA). Both entities are in collaboration to process similar applications from other brokerage firms.

Earlier this month, Finance Magnates reported that the Nasdaq Dubai exchange will launch an equity futures market to trade single-stock futures on the shares of specific local companies. Apart from equity derivatives, Dubai exchanges offers local and global investors access to energy, currency, commodity futures and options.