PSE: Stock market accounts breach 1M mark in 2018, up 25.4%

Local bourse operator Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Thursday said the number of stock market accounts broke past the one million mark in 2018 on the back of increase in online accounts.

Citing its 2018 Stock Market Investor Profile report, the PSE said total stock market accounts reached 1,089,443, up 25.4% from the 868,810 accounts in 2017.

The increase in total stock market accounts was spurred by a 60.9% increase in the number of online accounts to 625,763 from 388,864 a year earlier.

“It may have taken some time to breach this one million milestone but as they say better late than never. The advent of online trading has proven to be the catalyst for the rapid growth of stock market investors in the last five years,” PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon said.

“While one million is a big number in absolute terms, it is just a small percentage of our population. We need to continue and intensify our investment literacy initiatives and target to get an additional million of stock market investors in a shorter period of time,” Monzon said.

Retail investors owned most of the stock market accounts, accounting for 97.5% of the total accounts while institutional investors held the remaining 2.5%.

Meanwhile, 98.4% of the total accounts were held by domestic investors while the rest were owned by foreign investors.

The 2018 PSE report also presented information on the demographic of Philippine stock market investors.

The gap between male and female investors was further reduced with 51.6% male investors compared with 48.4% female investors.

In 2017, there were 54.6% and 45.4% male and female investors, respectively.

In terms of age, the most notable change was the increase in the percentage share of investors in the 18 to 29 age group, according to the PSE.

The age group comprised 21.5% of total stock market account holders from just 16.2% in 2017.

Those in the 30 to 44 age range accounted for 43.1% of investors while the 45 to 59 and 60 and above had a 21.6% and 13.9% representation, respectively.

Income-wise, 62.4% of investors earned less than P500,000 annually.

This was followed by those who earned between P500,000 and P1 million annually at 21.0% and those with over P1 million income at 16.6%.

Most investors were locally-employed, and made up for 65.6% of investor count.

The rest of the investors were self-employed, retired, unemployed, overseas Filipino workers, and students.

In terms of location, majority of investors are still based in Metro Manila accounting for 62.2% of the total retail stock investors.

Luzon had 21.5% of investors, while the Visayas and Mindanao each had 8.9% and 4.4% of the investor count.

The top five countries with the most investors were the United Arab Emirates, United States of America, Japan, China, and Singapore.

However, in terms of nationality, among the foreign investors, the top three were Chinese at 23.7%, American at 15.7%, and Japanese at 10.3%.

“Some people still have stereotypes of stock market investors which are debunked by our latest investor profile report. Investors nowadays are younger and a significant number of them are women. It also shows that it is not necessary to have a big salary to be able to invest, what is important is to know how to set aside money for investment,” Monzon said. — RSJ, GMA News