Activity on the Lebanese stock market narrowed during the seventh month of the year 2021, with volume traded on the BSE dropping to 1,814,751 shares in July 2021, compared to 3,027,735 shares in June. Similarly, value traded fell by 44.33% month-on-month to $30.62 million, from $55.01 million in June. Trades mainly comprised real estate (62.62%), banking (36.71%) and industry & trading (0.67%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 8.75% month-on-month to just above $9.81 billion and by 58.19% year-on-year from a $6.20 billion reading recorded in July of last year. The month-on-month rise in the market capitalization owes to the sizeable increase in the price of Solidere “A” and “B” stocks.

More so on a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 76.55% year-on-year to around 20.08 million shares during the first seven months 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, more than doubled to about $218.52 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the seventh month of 2021 up at 1.737x from 1.400x in June and 0.803x in July of the previous year.

Overall, trading activity was thinner in July 2021, as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.09%, down from 0.16% in June. Furthermore, the turnover ratio stood at a meager 1.04% YTD July of this year, compared to 4.40% in the same period last year as investors remained on the sidelines awaiting some glimmer of hope regarding Lebanon’s economic reform journey.