A big chunk of stock trading last year was done digitally with the rise in online investor accounts, a significant portion of which are owned by those aged 18 to 29 years old, according to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).
The local bourse said online trades grew by 20.6 percent to 21.45 million last year, which was 74.7 percent of the total volume.
In terms of value, online trades soared by 43.6 percent to P744.49 billion from P518.27 billion for the period.
This, as online investor accounts rose by 23.8 percent to about 1.16 million last year, which represented 71.5 percent of the total stock market accounts.
The share in online accounts by those belonging to the 18 to 29 age bracket increased to 41.2 percent last year from 26.8 percent. In total, this segment accounted for 35 percent of total accounts, which was up from 22.5 percent.
This comes as a welcome development for the PSE despite the cryptocurrency market wooing younger investors in recent years amid the popularity of Bitcoin and the advent of play-to-earn games.
Regina Capital Development Corp. head of sales Luis Limlingan said that investors, regardless of the mode of investment, would always look at the accessibility of the funds and their rate of return.
“If stocks are a credible platform to make decent returns then of course they’ll invest in stocks. The same can be said with crypto,” he explained.
“This isn’t a social media platform built on trends and popularity,” he said of the stock market
As for offline transactions, trading value increased by 11 percent to P2.92 trillion from P2.63 trillion for the period.
Around 62 percent of investors have an annual income of less than P500,000. Those who are earning between P500,000 and P1 million annually comprised 20.9 percent of the pie. The balance was accounted for by investors whose yearly income surpasses P1 million.
The profiles of retail investors included local employees, self-employed, retired, students and overseas workers.
The number of unemployed investors, meanwhile, climbed to 7.9 percent last year from 5.4 percent of the total accounts.
“There was a notable increase last year in the number of retail investors that had no formal employment. We are glad that in spite of their employment status, these individuals earmarked their savings for investing in the stock market,” PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon said.
In total, stock market accounts were up by 16 percent to 1.62 million last year, which Monzon attributed to the launch of several initial public offerings and follow-on offerings.