Activity on the Lebanese stock market fell significantly during the third month of the year 2021, with volume traded on the BSE dropping to 2,293,580 shares in March 2021, compared to 8,583,833 shares in February in the absence of any block trades. On the other hand, value traded increased by 63.18% month-on-month to $39.35 million, from $24.11 million in February. Trades mainly comprised real estate sector (72.39%), banking sector (26.20%) and industry & trading (1.41%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies soared by 25.38% month-on-month to around $8.90 billion and by 43.39% year-on-year from a $6.20 billion reading recorded in March of last year.

On a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 51.02% year-on-year to around 11.05 million shares during the first quarter of the current year owing to the partial lockdown that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and the paralyzed economic activity amid the prolonged political vacuum. Value traded on the other hand rose by 126.41% annually to about $65.84 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the third month of 2021 up at 1.281x from 1.114x in February and 0.543x in March of the previous year.

Overall, trading activity was thinner in March 2021, 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 0.44% in February. The turnover ratio reached 0.57% in the first quarter of this year, compared to 1.16% in the same period last year as investors remained on the sidelines awaiting some glimmer of hope regarding Lebanon’s economic reform journey.