Investor accounts in the Philippine stock market grew by 4.8 percent to 498,838 in 2010 from 476,194 accounts the previous year.

Retail or individual accounts continued to grab the lion’s share at 95 percent or 474,002 of total accounts while institutional accounts or those held by corporations cornered 5 percent.

In terms of nationality, accounts held by local investors comprised 98.5 percent of total accounts while foreign accounts cornered 1.5 percent. Foreign accounts were however more active than their local counterparts in 2010.  Of the total foreign accounts, 36.8 percent were active while only 23.9 percent of total local accounts were considered active.  Both local and foreign accounts grew in 2010 by 4.6 percent and 13.6 percent, respectively.

Table 1. Summary of Investor Profile, 2008 to 2010

Retail Investor Profile

The Retail Investor Profile a more detailed retail survey conducted in terms of gender, income, age group, profession, location and nationality using information received from 68 to 94 trading participants per category.

In terms of gender, the number of male investors was higher than the number of female investors. On the other hand, a higher percentage of female investors were slightly more active investors than their male counterparts.

Based on annual income of retail investors, individuals earning above P1 million annually comprised 36.7 percent of retail investors. More than one-third of retail investors earn between P500,000 to P1 million a year while the remaining 29.1 percent earn less than P500,000 per year. Likewise, investors earning more than P1 million annually were the most active traders.

Of the total retail investors, 42.7 percent were between the ages of 45 to 59.  Investors in the 30 to 44 years age group followed, accounting for 31.2 percent of retail investors. Investors aged 60 years and above comprised 20.7 percent of retail accounts while those between the ages of 18 to 29 years accounted for a small percentage of 5.4 percent.

Most retail investors were engaged in the services sector and were professionals, which comprised 37.7 percent and 18.6 percent of retail accounts, respectively.  Self-employed individuals on the other hand, accounted for 17.2 percent of retail accounts.

Most local retail investors were based in Metro Manila accounting for 78.3 percent while 14.4 percent of retail investors were based in Luzon (excluding Metro Manila). Local retail investors from Visayas and Mindanao represented 4.3 percent and 1.8 percent of total retail accounts, respectively. Overseas local investors comprised a collective 1.2 percent of local retail accounts.

Meanwhile, of the total foreign retail investors, 39.6 percent were of Chinese descent. Investors from other countries, and American investors comprised 20.8 percent, and 19.3 percent, respectively. Europeans, Taiwanese, Singaporeans and Koreans accounted for 7.1 percent, 4.4 percent, 3.9 percent, and 3.6 percent, respectively. 

Online Investor Profile

Eight online TPs provided data on online accounts in 2010. Data showed that there were a total of 35,559 online accounts. This was a remarkable 25.8 percent growth from the previous year’s total of 28,261 online accounts. However, online accounts represent only 7.1 percent of total stock market accounts.

Online investors continue to be very active traders as the total number of active online accounts amounted to 34,933 or 98.2 percent of the total online accounts. This is much higher than the ratio of active non-online accounts to total non-online accounts of just 18.4 percent.

Retail investors remained the key market for online accounts as they accounted for 99.6 percent of total online accounts.  Of the total online accounts, 96.9 percent were local while 3.1 percent were foreign.

Online trades represented 16.3% of total trades in 2010 despite their meager share of only 4.5% to total regular trade value turnover in the stock market. The average trade value of investors using the online facility was P99,808.55.

Online retail investors were predominantly male and belonged to a younger age group of between 30 to 44 years. Majority of online retail investors earned less than P500,000 annually and were based in Metro Manila.