Activity on the Beirut Stock Exchange improved during the seventh month of 2026 with the number of shares changing hands increasing to 363,261 shares from 348,367 shares a month earlier and value traded rising by 1.62% to $18.57 million from around $18.28 million in June. Trades mainly consisted of real estate sector stocks (67.88% of total number of shares traded) followed by banking (32.10%) and industry & trading (0.02%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies dropped by 2.44% in July to $18.03 billion, noting that it came in 12.96% lower year-on-year when benchmarked to the $20.71 billion reading recorded at end of July 2025. The monthly decrease in the market capitalization is attributed to the contraction in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks namely Solidere “A” (1.67% monthly drop), Solidere “B” (4.04% monthly decrease), and Ciments Libanais (25.00% monthly drop), which altogether outweighed the appreciation in the price of BLOM Bank listed shares (9.63% monthly increase).

On an annual basis, the number of shares traded on the BSE rose by 54.37% to 14.38 million shares in the first seven months of 2026 from around 9.31 million shares in the same period in 2025 with traded value soaring by 13.02% to $192.56 million from just above $170.37 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 July 2026 lower at 5.760x compared to 5.972x in June, noting that it stood at 6.767x at end of July 2025 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $84.25 and $83.95 respectively compared to closing prices of $73.50 for Solidere “A” shares and $70.00 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of July 2026.

Overall, trading activity remained almost flat in July 2026, with the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) standing at 0.02%. The turnover ratio, however, increased to 0.73% as at the end of the first seven months of 2026, compared to 0.48% in the same period in 2025.