Activity on the Lebanese stock market improved during the eighth month of the year 2021, with volume traded on the BSE rising to 2,166,545 shares in August 2021, compared to 1,814,751 shares in July. On the other hand, value traded fell by 20.42% month-on-month to $24.37 million, from $30.62 million in July. Trades mainly comprised banking (66.72%), real estate (26.78%) and industry & trading (6.50%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 7.73% month-on-month to just above $10.57 billion and by 70.36% year-on-year from a $6.20 billion reading recorded in August of last year. The month-on-month rise in the market capitalization owes to the sizeable increase in the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” stocks.

On a cumulative basis however, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 74.30% year-on-year to around 22.25 million shares during the first eight 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 $242.89 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the eighth month of 2021 up at 1.922x from 1.737x in July and 0.849x in August of the previous year.

Overall, trading activity was stronger in August 2021, as evidenced by the increase in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.11%, up from 0.09% in July. On a cumulative basis however, the turnover ratio stood at a meager 1.13% YTD August of this year, compared to 4.45% in the same period last year as investors remained on the sidelines awaiting some glimmer of hope regarding Lebanon’s economic reform journey.