Online stock market accounts rose 25 percent to 782,118 in 2019 in 2019 from 625,763 accounts in 2018, and make up 63.7 percent of the 1.23 million stock market accounts in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).
The PSE said the balance is comprised of traditional accounts.
The PSE said last year’s total stock market account is a 12.7 percent increase from the prior year’s 1.09 million, with the growth driven by online accounts.
“Online accounts have been the reason for the steady rise in total stock market accounts in the last 10 years. The shift in trading format preference of investors have encouraged stockbrokerage companies that cater to retail investors to start offering online trading services to their clients,” said Ramon Monzon, PSE president.
“While the data we have now is from 2019, we expect the online investor population to increase in 2020 mainly due to investors opening online accounts during the community quarantine period and as investors participate in initial public offerings through PSE EASy (Electronic Allocation System),” Monzon added.
The PSE’s stock market investor profile report cited a 12.9 percent and 6.4 percent increase in the number of retail and institutional accounts to 1,199,565 and 28,473, respectively.
“Retail investors made up 97.7 percent of total accounts while the remaining 2.3 percent was accounted for by institutional investors. Meantime, local investors comprised 98.4 percent of total stock market accounts, with foreign investors owning the rest,” the PSE said.
