Stock markets across the globe may be tanking, but the Baghdad bourse is booming, with the general index of Iraq's stock exchange up by nearly 40 percent last month.

Brokers -- sweat stains spreading under their armpits -- wrote the latest stock prices on a wall of whiteboards, the Baghdad bourse's answer to computer screens.

Investors waved and made hand signals at the brokers working behind a low partition. Hotels and banks were the hottest picks among the exchange's 95 listed companies.

"People know the hotel stocks are undervalued ... They think that in the new year companies will come to Iraq and the hotel business will flourish," said investor Saad Jalil, adding that the bourse was the busiest he'd ever seen it.

The world banking crisis won't affect us, our market is sealed off from the outside. We don't even have electronic trading."