Activity on the Lebanese stock market improved markedly during the eleventh month of the year 2020, with the volume traded on the BSE soaring by 52.98% to 1,428,230 shares in November, from 933,600 shares in October. Similarly, value traded rose by 8.22% month-on-month to $12.54 million, from $11.59 million in October. Trades mainly comprised real estate sector stocks, which controlled 52.47% of the total traded volume, followed by banking sector stocks (47.53%) with no activity on industry & trading stocks being recorded. The market capitalization of listed stocks fell by 4.83% month-on-month to around $6.14 billion and remained lower than the circa $7.54 billion reading recorded in November of last year. Said drop in market cap can be partly attributed to the cancellation and delisting of Bank of Beirut priority shares 2014.

On a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 52.08% year-on-year to around 94.92 million shares during the first eleven months of the current year partly owing to the lockdown that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and the crippled economic activity amid the ongoing political turmoil. Value traded was no exception, sinking by 81.19% over the same period to about $165 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) of listed stocks ended the eleventh month of 2020 almost flat at 0.906x, compared to 0.901x in October.

Overall, trading activity was more robust in November 2020, as evidenced by the rise in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.07%, up from 0.05% in October. The turnover ratio reached 4.88% on a cumulative basis up to the month of November of this year, compared to 11.28% in the same period last year as investors remained on the sidelines awaiting some glimmer of hope regarding Lebanon’s reform journey.