HEXUS.sharewatch: ARM rises as markets are cautioned by Dubai

After the impresses rises of the middle of the year, global stock markets have definitely plateaued for the time being. The NASDAQ and FTSE 100 are little higher today than they were two months ago and the growth of the Dow index has slowed considerably.

This is reflected in our selection of shares, which seems to be alternating between up and down weeks, on average.

This was a marginally down week for most of them, with investor sentiment on the whole being tested by the Dubai sovereign fund to delay repayment of its debts.  The good news is that it hasn't catalysed a wholesale panic, and things seem to be being kept in perspective. But at the very least Dubai serves as a sobering reminder of how precarious the recovery is.

One stock to have a relatively good week was UK embedded chip designer ARM. The ecosystem around its chips has been reasonably proactive recently, with semiconductor companies like Qualcomm and NVIDIA expected to make a big noise at SEC in January with products based on their SoCs (system on chip).