ABSTRACT
The current study aimed to shed light on the banking sector in the Palestine Stock Exchange before and during the spread of the Corona virus;the researchers had decided to analyze the performance indicators of the first quarter of 2019 as the pre-crisis period and compare them with the performance indicators of the first quarter of 2020 and the period between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020 as the crisis period. The study sample consisted of 6 companies from the banking sector;the independent samples T-test was used in order to test the study hypotheses. The study results showed that in the first quarter of 2019, the percentage of profits (profit after tax) ranged between $10,784,284 and $1,062,702. On average it amounted to $4,201,265. As for the hypotheses of the study, the results did not show any differences. The results of the Mann-Whitny U test showed that the Z-value was 0 for the hypotheses and this is not statistically significant at 1%, and therefore the null hypothesis, which states that there are no statistically significant differences between the first quarter of 2019 compared to the first quarter of 2020 in terms of all variables, is accepted. The same results apply to the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.