New Investors in the Philippines Are Young, Female and Tech-Savvy

(Bloomberg) -- Millennials and online investors pushed the number of stock market accounts in the Philippines past the 1 million mark in 2018, a 25% increase from a year earlier.

This was driven by a 61% surge in online investors or 626,000 accounts out of the almost 1.1 million total in 2018, Philippine Stock Exchange said in a statement. Investors 18 to 29 years old comprised more than a fifth of total retail investors last year, up from 16% in 2017. The share of female investors also rose to 48% from 45%.

“Investors nowadays are younger and a significant number of them are women,” PSE President Ramon Monzon said. “The advent of online trading has proven to be the catalyst for rapid growth of stock market investors in the last five years.”

Other Highlights

• Retail investors owned 98% of Philippine stock market accounts in 2018, with 62% of them earning less than half a million pesos ($9,582) a year, while 21% made 500,000 pesos to 1 million pesos.
• Domestic investors held 98% of stock market accounts. By nationality, the top foreign investors were Chinese (24%), American (16%) and Japanese (10%).

To contact the reporter on this story: Claire Jiao in Manila at cjiao5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecilia Yap at cyap19@bloomberg.net, Clarissa Batino, Andreo Calonzo

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