Activity on the Beirut Stock Exchange was more robust during the ninth month of 2026 with the number of shares changing hands more than doubling to 664,028 shares and value traded rising by 55.75% to $19.06 million from around $12.23 million in August. Trades mainly consisted of banking sector stocks (63.40% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (34.89%) and industry & trading (1.71%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies, however, dropped by 1.70% in September to just below $17.50 billion, noting that it came in 16.40% lower year-on-year when benchmarked to the $20.93 billion reading recorded at end of September 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” (1.00% monthly drop), Bank Audi listed shares (4.57% monthly decline) and Ciments Libanais (3.92% monthly decrease), which altogether outweighed the appreciation in the price of BLOM Bank listed shares (6.55% monthly increase).

On an annual basis, the number of shares traded on the BSE rose by 7.85% to 15.35 million shares as at the end of the first nine months of 2026 from around 14.23 million shares in the same period in 2025 with traded value increasing by 1.10% to $223.85 million from just above $221.42 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 September 2026 lower at 5.264 compared to 5.520x in August, noting that it stood at 6.787x at end of September 2025 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $85.05 and $84.95 respectively compared to closing prices of $69.30 for Solidere “A” shares and $70.10 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of September 2026.

Overall, trading activity was more dynamic in September 2026 as evidenced by the increase in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.03%, up from 0.02% a month earlier. Similarly, the turnover ratio rose to 0.78% as at the end of the first nine months of 2026, compared to 0.73% in the same period in 2025.