The Lebanese Bourse Barely Shifted Throughout the Week

Trading activity weakened on the Lebanese Stock Exchange this week, which was characterized by two political dialogue sessions and a demonstration on Thursday. The BLOM Stock Index (BSI) barely changed, going down by a marginal 0.06%, to 1.145.09 points. In addition, in details, the average traded volume and value went down from 1.34M shares worth $12.54M to 92,568 shares worth $1.00M. As for the market capitalization, it remained relatively stable at $9.52B.

Globally, the Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Index (MSCI), the S&P Pan Arab Composite Large-Mid-Cap Index and the S&P AFE 40 Index recorded respective gains of 6.36%, 2.83%, and 2.31%, respectively, over the week.

Most Gulf States saw weekly improvements in their bourses mainly due to a 10.41% rally in oil prices. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt were the best performers regionally, increasing by 4.68%, 2.63%, and 2.48%, respectively, from Friday 2nd of October’s level. On the other hand, the bourses of Bahrain, Tunisia and Muscat were the worst performers, dropping by weekly 1.69%, 0.92%, and 0.21%%, respectively.

Back to the Beirut Stock Exchange, the banking sector captured 83.46% of the total traded value during the week while the real estate sector and the industrial sector grasped the remaining 11.41% and 5.13%, respectively.

In the banking sector, the GDR shares of BLOM and that of Audi lost 0.10% and 1.00% to end the week at $9.65 and $5.94, respectively. BLOM common shares also dropped by 0.53% to end the week at $9.40, while the common shares of Audi and Byblos increased by a weekly 0.34% and 0.63% to respective quotes of $5.99 and $1.61.

On a weekly basis, the BLOM Preferred Shares Index (BPSI) didn’t change, remaining at 105.29 points. This was attributed to Audi preferred shares class “H”going up by a 0.10% weekly to $101.10, which was offset by BLOM preferred shares 2011 declining by 0.10% to $10.15, over the same period. 

 In the real estate sector, Solidere shares class “A” gained 0.10% to $10.08 while the class “B” shares declined by 0.50% to $10.04.

In the industrial sector, Holcim shares traded with no change in price.

 During the coming weeks, the Lebanese Bourse will keep on mimicking investors’ attitude towards the country’s main security, political and economic issues. 

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