Activity on the Lebanese stock market rose significantly during the second month of the year 2021 owing to the large trades on Bank Audi listed shares involving some 7.32 million shares. In details, the volume traded on the BSE skyrocketed to 8,583,833 shares in February 2021, compared to 170,734 shares in January. Similarly, value traded increased by more than twelve folds to $24.11 million, from $2.37 million in January. Trades mainly comprised banking sector (91.75%), real estate sector (8.02%) and industry & trading (0.23%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 5.17% month-on-month to around $7.09 billion and by 13.79% year-on-year from a $6.24 billion reading recorded in February of last year.

On a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 51.47% year-on-year to around 8.76 million shares during the first two months of the current year owing to the lockdown that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and the crippled economic activity amid the ongoing political turmoil. Value traded on the other hand rose by 98.11% annually to about $26.49 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the second month of 2021 up at 1.114x from 1.092x in January and 0.532x in February of the previous year.

Overall, trading activity was stronger in February 2021, as evidenced by the rise in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.44%, up from 0.01% in January. The turnover ratio reached 0.45% on a cumulative basis by end of the first two months of this year, compared to 1.03% in the same period last year as investors remained on the sidelines awaiting some glimmer of hope regarding Lebanon’s reform journey.