It is known for Porsche-driving princes and the lavish lifestyles of the oil-wealthy, but this week Saudi Arabia’s rich kids have been selling their cars and even rushing to the doctor after a whirlwind stock market crash saw huge profits perish.

Heart-attacks, stress, hospitalization, and panic selling are all reported results of the Saudi collapse, which has seen tens of billions of dollars in losses in a fortnight.

This week alone the Saudi market fell by 20%, with only the promise from a prince to invest $2.6 billion temporarily stemming the financial bleeding.

The losses have been particularly hard felt in the share-mad kingdom, where more than a third of the 17 million population dabble in the stock market. With years of soaring profits fuelled by ever-higher oil prices, small investors have rushed to get in on the action. Now panic and despair have hit the almost 60% of Saudi investors who are small dealers speculating with family savings.

“Many individuals have pulled their savings out of banks and put it into local stocks, with many even borrowing to the limit to do so,” a vice-president at Riyad Bank in the Saudi capital, Khan H. Zahid, said.

There, dealers in the luxuries that have become part of the Saudi image reported a collapse in sales. “Our sales have dropped by more than 40% in the past two weeks. Many people are even coming to us to sell their cars,” the owner of one car showroom, Mansur Al Suqairi, said.

The market crash, which analysts predict could wipe away up to 60% of stock value before bottoming out, is not just being felt in Saudi Arabia.

Across the Gulf and the Middle East markets have crashed, fuelling protests and the anguish of day traders who had got used to sky-rocketing prices. “Recently it became like gambling and not investment in most Gulf markets,” an economist, Abdulaziz al-Daghestani, said. “That’s why we are seeing the fast fall.”

For many average investors who have got used to the six- to seven-fold rise in Gulf stock markets since 2001, financial talk of “corrections” is not good enough.

In Kuwait the market has slumped 15% in just over a month, and in Egypt, where the stock bubble saw shares up 148% in 2005, the regional crash is also being keenly felt.

“There were people in Egypt who quit their jobs to play the stock market,” an analyst with investment bank EFG-Hermes, Ahmed Hefnawi, said. “Today they will pay the price.”

The Gulf’s linchpin, Saudi Arabia, is being blamed for the financial meltdown. Investors there have fuelled not only their own market, but bought in neighboring markets too. Now that they are withdrawing what money remains, all the bourses are suffering.