Activity on the Lebanese stock market was thinner during the seventh month of the year 2020, with volume traded on the BSE plunging by 74.39% to 2,315,343 shares during the month of July, from 9,040,647 shares in June. Conversely, value traded increased by 2.94% month-on-month to $29.36 million, from $28.53 million in June. Trades mainly comprised real estate sector stocks, which controlled 83.32% of the total traded volume, followed by banking stocks (16.47%) and industry & trading stocks (0.21%). The market capitalization of listed stocks narrowed to around $6.20 billion by end of July, from nearly $6.36 billion at end of June and remained much lower than the circa $8.21 billion reading recorded in July of last year.

On a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 54.79% year-on-year to around 85.65 million shares during the first seven months of the current year partly owing to the lockdown that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak, with value traded sinking by 87.13% over the same period to about $104.47 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) of listed stocks ended the seventh month of 2020 higher at 0.803x, compared to 0. 731x in June mainly owing to the significant increase in the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” shares.

Overall, trading activity was thinner during the month of July 2020, as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.12%, down from 0.46% in June. The turnover ratio, however, reached 4.40% on a cumulative basis by end of the first seven months of this year, compared to 10.78% in the same period last year as a result of the economic meltdown and lack of political consensus on Lebanon’s reform journey.