The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) said online stock trading accounts have cornered 67 percent of total accounts made in its platform as of last year.
“Online trading accounts increased by 19.7 percent to 936,200 while non-online accounts went up by 3.3 percent to 460,553. In the previous year, online accounts comprised 782,118 of total stock market accounts while non-online accounts were at 445,920,” the PSE said.
“The preference for opening online accounts continues to rise since technology has made investing more accessible to investors. At the PSE, we also continue to enhance and develop online services that will benefit the investing public,” said Ramon Monzon, PSE president.
The total stock market accounts grew 13.7 percent last year to 1.4 million from 1.23 million the prior year.
Retail investors held most of the accounts at 1.37 million, 97.9 percent of total stock market accounts, while institutional investors owned 2.1 percent or 29,898 accounts.
“Meantime, local investors made up for 1,375,520 or 98.5 percent of total stock market accounts compared with 21,233 accounts of foreign investors,” the PSE said.
“We noted that there was a 35.6 percent increase in the number of active accounts last year. The pandemic prompted retail investors to actively participate in the stock market,” Monzon said.
In 2020, average daily number of trades rose by 33.7 percent while retail participation surged by 47.8 percent year-on-year, Monzon added.
As of last year, the difference in the number of retail trading accounts owned by male and female investors remains at less than one percent, with the former comprising 50.8 percent of stock market accounts while the latter is at 49.2 percent.
“In terms of age, investors in the 30 to 44 age group held 45.6 percent of stock market accounts. They are followed by investors aged 18 to 29 at 22.5 percent, then those in the age groups of 45 to 59 and 60 and above at 19.8 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively,” the PSE said.
It also said retail investors earning less than P500,000 annually made up 61.2 percent of stock market account holders, while 21.6 percent of retail accounts were owned by those with an annual income of P500,000 to P1 million. Investors whose annual income is above P1 million comprised 17.2 percent of retail investors.
Domestic investors had 98.3 percent share of stock market accounts while investors based overseas held the remaining 1.7 percent of shares.
The biggest number of domestic investors were based in Metro Manila at 75.7 percent, followed by Luzon at 13.5 percent then Visayas at 5.7 percent and finally, Mindanao at 3.4 percent.
The PSE said the top five nationalities of foreign investors were Chinese, Japanese, American, British and Korean.
In January the PSE said local investors are swamping the trades in the local stock market for the past eight consecutive months, eclipsing foreign funds’ participation. Foreign funds normally take the bulk of trading turnover in the PSE.
In January alone, local investors, both retail and institutional, accounted for 75.3 percent of value turnover, the PSE said – the highest local investor participation on a monthly basis since March 2010 at 76.2 percent.
“The value turnover ratio was 56.8 to 43.2 in favor of foreign investors in January 2020 and 54.6 to 45.4 in favor of local investors for the entire 2020,” the PSE then said.
In January, the daily average value turnover reached P11.04 billion, up from P7.35 billion as of end-2020 and P6.13 billion as of end-January 2020.
The current market turnover however has yet to reach its January high.
Retail investor participation in the stock market at the same time also continued to grow, with retail investors accounting for 52.2 percent in January.
Retail participation started to expand when the pandemic started. In 2020, the retail market was responsible for 26.9 percent of value traded from 18.2 percent in 2021
