Stock market accounts breach the 1M mark

The number of stock market accounts broke past the one million mark based on the 2018 Stock Market Investor Profile report of The Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. (PSE). Total stock market accounts reached 1,089,443, up by 25.4 percent from the 868,810 accounts in 2017. This was spurred by a 60.9 percent increase in the number of online accounts to 625,763 this year from 388,864 the previous year.

"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," said PSE President and CEO Ramon S. Monzon.

"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," Mr. Monzon added.  
 
Retail investors owned most of the stock market accounts, cornering 97.5 percent of the total accounts while institutional investors held the remaining 2.5 percent of total accounts. Meantime, 98.4 percent of the total accounts were held by domestic investors while the rest were owned by foreign investors.

Retail Investor Profile

The 2018 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 percent male investors compared with 48.4 percent female investors. In 2017, there were 54.6 percent and 45.4 percent 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. They comprised 21.5 percent of total stock market account holders from just 16.2 percent in 2017. Those in the 30 to 44 age range accounted for 43.1 percent of investors while the 45 to 59 and 60 and above had a 21.6 percent and 13.9 percent representation, respectively.

Income-wise, 62.4 percent of investors earned less than P500 thousand annually. This was followed by those who earned between P500 thousand and P1 million annually at 21.0 percent and those with over P1 million income at 16.6 percent. Most investors were locally-employed, and made up for 65.6 percent of investor count. The rest of the investors were self-employed, retired, unemployed, Overseas Filipino Workers, and students.

When it comes to location, majority of investors are still based in Metro Manila as they accounted for 62.2 percent of the total retail stock investors. Luzon had 21.5 percent of investors, while Visayas and Mindanao each had 8.9 percent and 4.4 percent of the investor count. Meantime, with reference to location, 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 percent, American at 15.7 percent, and Japanese at 10.3 percent.

"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," Mr. Monzon explained.