Freedom Calls: 31/8/26, “Nvidia blows away its critics... and the UAE keeps calm and carries on

Freedom Calls: 31/8/26, "Nvidia blows away its critics... and the UAE keeps calm and carries on"

From the team at Freedom Asset Management

First up, thanks to our friends at CNBC for hosting Cody Willard last week in Abu Dhabi. It happened to be the morning after Nvidia released another set of blockbuster numbers - and Nvidia is a firm that Cody knows well, having invested in the stock for over a decade. As you can see, Cody is very happy talking about Nvidia's success. You can watch it here or by clicking the link below.

Source: CNBC, 27/8/26

We had a whistle-stop tour around our largest clients in Abu Dhabi, before hosting an investor-only dinner in Dubai on Thursday night with Cody and Canaccord's Justin Oliver. We very much enjoyed the evening - thank you to all those investors who made it out!

The UAE keeps calm and carries on

For anyone who does not live in the UAE, or for those who have been away for much of the summer, there could be an understandable sense of apprehension about the geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East right now. Indeed, I read this morning that the US and Iran exchanged fire briefly yesterday, but this was a fairly minor incident.

Life in the UAE is pretty normal - you would not know that there is a conflict going on over the horizon. There are obviously fewer tourists, the hotels are quieter, (some are taking the opportunity to bring forward refurbishment plans), but everyone who lives in the UAE is keeping their head down and carrying on, and importantly families are returning for the September school start after the long summer holiday.

Some music concerts have been cancelled in the UAE, and whilst Bahrain's F1 meeting in October will now take place in Malaysia, the Abu Dhabi F1 meeting scheduled for December re-confirmed its place in the F1 calendar last week. Air France also resumed its flights to Dubai last week; for British Airways and Lufthansa they are looking at the end of October to return. I have to admit I am really enjoying flying with Emirates - so I won't be in a hurry to go back to BA on their routes to the UAE and Asia.

Interestingly, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, there are now direct commercial flights between Tehran/Dubai, and also Tel Aviv/Dubai (see below) - so on a practical level the UAE is doing as much as possible to de-escalate this war:

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