Online stock market accounts breach 1 million in 2021 —PSE

The number of online stock market accounts has breached the one million mark last year, the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) said Friday.

In its annual stock market investor profile (SMIP) report, the PSE said that online investor accounts totaled 1,159,034, up 23.8% from 936,200 in 2020.

The local bourse operator said online accounts comprised 71.5% of total stock market accounts in 2021. 

The PSE said that back in 2008, when it started its SMIP survey, online accounts only made up 4.3% of total stock market accounts.

The surge in online accounts also paved the way for the total number of accounts to post its highest year-on-year increase in terms of new accounts at 223,264.

The previous record was 220,603 accounts registered in 2018.

For 2021, total stock market accounts rose by 16% to 1,620,017.

“I believe having a record number of initial public offerings (IPOs) and follow-on offerings for 2021 contributed to the growth of our investor base. In fact, the Local Small Investor tranche of two of the eight IPOs last year were oversubscribed,” said PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon.

The PSE noted that online investor accounts were responsible for 74.7% of total trades in the stock market in 2021, equivalent to 21.45 million trades, up 20.6% from 17.78 million transactions in 2020. 

Likewise, the value of online trades also went up by 43.6% to P744.49 billion from P518.27 billion year-on-year.

However, non-online accounts still registered a much higher trading value at P2.92 trillion, up 11% from P2.63 trillion in 2020.

The value of trades for online and non-online includes both buy and sell sides but does not include block sales, according to the PSE.

Local investors owned majority of the total stock market accounts at 98.5% or 1,595,481 compared with their foreign counterpart at 1.5% or 24,536. 

The same story goes for retail versus institutional investors, with the former making up for 98.1% or 1,589,507 of total accounts leaving the latter with a 1.9% share at 30,510.—LDF, GMA News