Capital.com clients in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) traded $1.06 trillion in the first half of 2026 and set a stop-loss on 18.3% of their trades. No other market in the broker's H1 2026 Pulse Report, published today (Monday), had a lower rate.The UAE generated more than two-fifths of the $2.45 trillion that clients traded on Capital.com between January and June, up 27.7% from $1.92 trillion in the second half of 2025, according to the report. Closed trades rose 48% to 80.9 million.London's trading industry is coming home!The Middle East already produced about half of the broker's $3.42 trillion in 2025 volume, so the region's habits move Capital.com's averages. Platform-wide, 22.43% of closed trades carried a stop-loss set at entry in the first half, against 22.21% in the previous six months.Germany Tops the Stop-Loss Table at 34%Germany led the seven markets at 34.06%, up 6.83 percentage points from the second half of 2025. The Netherlands followed at 32.81% and Poland at 32.16%, after the largest gain of the seven, 8.34 points.Italy's rate rose 5.45 points to 26.92%. Australia slipped 0.92 points to 27.40%, which the broker attributed to new trading during the second-quarter technology rally.The United Kingdom was flat at 24.71%, and the UAE gained 1.22 points from 17.08%.The broker's July update put second-quarter stop-loss use at 26.6% of positions, a different base from the closed trades counted in the half-year report."Helping more traders set an exit before they trade is where we're focusing," Tarik Chebib, Capital.com's chief executive for the Middle East and North Africa, said in the report.France is left out because Capital.com says French rules make a guaranteed stop mandatory on every CFD position. The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) began in 2017 to tie CFD advertising to guaranteed stops and negative balance protection.In a separate comparison, positions closed by a triggered stop-loss lost 39% less on average than positions with no stop at all, from 55.2% less in Germany to 17.7% in Australia.Capital.com says this is a correlation in one half-year of data and does not show that the orders cause better outcomes.Gold Led the Half at Other Brokers TooGold Spot was Capital.com's largest instrument in both half-years. In January it accounted for 57% of a $508 billion month, the busiest of the half, and in the UAE it made up 54% of volume over the six months.Other retail brokers have reported similar mixes. ACCM said gold made up 91% of its CFD activity in a $2.14 trillion first quarter.VT Markets put its first-half volume at about $8 trillion, up 212% from a year earlier, with gold and silver among its most traded products.In Europe, where Germany, the Netherlands and Poland top the stop-loss table, Capital.com agreed this month to take over FxPro's Cyprus-licensed client book.Technology Took Over From Gold in the Second QuarterVolume fell to $1.14 trillion in the second quarter from $1.31 trillion in the first. US Tech 100 volume rose 48% in May and 37% in June, and the index finished the quarter as the second-largest instrument at $292.4 billion.Oil moved the other way. US crude volume rose 700% in March during a supply shock linked to the conflict involving Iran, then fell 10% in April, 5% in May and 37% in June.Stops set for calm markets "can be triggered by ordinary price moves once volatility picks up," Christoforos Soutzis, Capital.com's chief executive for Europe, said in the report.The quarterly totals differ from the broker's earlier updates. In April it put first-quarter volume at $1.27 trillion, against $1.31 trillion in the new report, and in July it gave $1.13 trillion for the second quarter.The report draws on more than 80 million closed trades, about 32.2 million of them in the seven markets it profiles.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.