Activity on the Lebanese stock market tumbled into a nosedive during the eleventh month of the year resulting from the continuous political and social tensions in the country. In figures, and despite a small block trade on Bank Audi Pref. J shares involving 14,500 stocks, volume traded on the BSE plunged to 321,620 shares during the month of November 2019, down from 5,199,421 shares a month earlier. Concurrently, value traded dropped month-on-month to $3.56 million, from $34.99 million in October. Trades mainly consisted of real estate stocks, which represented 80.30% of the total traded volume, followed by banking (19.70%) stocks, with no activity on industry & trading stocks being recorded. From another standpoint, market capitalization narrowed to just below $7.54 billion in November, from around $7.55 billion in October and circa $9.72 billion in November of last year.

On a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE stood at 198.06 million shares during the first eleven months of the current year, with value traded approaching $877 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the month of November lower at 0.522x, compared to 0.524x in October and 0.705x in November 2018, owing to the sharp drop in the prices of listed stocks.

Overall, trading activity was extremely thin during the eleventh month of this year, as evidenced by the decrease in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.02%, down from 0.30% in October. However, the turnover ratio appreciated on a cumulative basis to reach 11.28% YTD November 2019, compared to 4.82% in the same period a year before.