Activity on the Beirut Stock Exchange was dull during the fourth month of 2026 with the number of shares changing hands decreasing to 326,058 shares from 681,770 shares a month earlier and value traded increasing by 134.44% to $17.49 million from around $7.46 million in March. The sluggish activity can be attributed to the recent turmoil that followed the eruption of the war in the Middle East since the beginning of March. Trades mainly consisted of real estate sector stocks (71.93% of total number of shares traded) followed by banking (28.04%) and industry & trading (0.03%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 0.98% in April to $18.44 billion, noting that it came in 12.81% lower year-on-year when benchmarked to the $21.15 billion reading recorded at end of April 2025. The monthly increase in the market capitalization is attributed to the appreciation in the price of Bank Audi listed shares (39.46% monthly rise) which outweighed the contraction in the prices of other heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (1.28% monthly decrease), Solidere “B” (0.50% monthly decline), and BLOM Bank listed shares (3.49% monthly drop).

On an annual basis, the number of shares traded on the BSE rose exponentially to 13.44 million shares YTD April 2026 from around 5.35 million shares in the same period in 2025 with traded value soaring by 84.29% to $150.27 million from just below $81.54 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the last trading day of April 2026 lower at 5.718x compared to 5.871x in March, noting that it stood at 7.032x in April 2025 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $87.20 and $87.10 respectively compared to closing prices of $73.55 for Solidere “A” shares and $70.15 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of April 2026.

Overall, trading activity grew thinner in April 2026 as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.02%, down from 0.03% a month before. Conversely, the turnover ratio increased to 0.69% as at the end of the first four months of 2026, compared to 0.27% in the same period in 2025.