ONLINE stock market accounts in the Philippines breached the one million mark in 2021.The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) announced this on Friday, June 10, 2022, in its annual stock market investor profile (SMIP) report, noting that online investor accounts grew by 23.8 percent year-on-year to 1,159,034 from 936,200 in 2020.Online accounts comprised 71.5 percent of total stock market accounts in 2021. Back in 2008, when PSE started its SMIP survey, online accounts only made up 4.3 percent 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 16.0 percent 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,” PSE president and chief executive Ramon Monzon said in a statement.Volume and value of tradesConsistent with the growth in online accounts is the pickup in number of online trades. Online investor accounts were responsible for 74.7 percent of total trades in the stock market during the year. This translates to 21.45 million trades, which is 20.6 percent more than the 17.78 million transactions in 2020. Consequently, the value of online trades also went up by 43.6 percent to P744.49 billion from P518.27 billion the previous year.Despite the brisk activity in the online space, the non-online accounts still registered a much higher trading value at P2.92 trillion, up by 11 percent from 2020’s P2.63 trillion. The value of trades for online and non-online includes both buy and sell sides but does not include block sales.DemographicsLocal investors owned majority of the total stock market accounts at 98.5 percent or 1,595,481 compared with their foreign counterpart at 1.5 percent or 24,536. The same story goes for retail versus institutional investors, with the former making up for 98.1 percent or 1,589,507 of total accounts leaving the latter with a 1.9 percent share at 30,510.The youngest age bracket, 18 to 29 years old, now has the most number of investors as the count for this age group went up to 35 percent of total retail accounts from 22.5 percent in the prior year. The former frontrunner, investors in the 30 to 44 age range, took up 33.9 of total market accounts while the 45 to 49 and those 60 and above had a 15 percent and 16 percent share, respectively. Specific to online accounts, the percent share of those aged 18 to 29 years old is higher at 41.2 percent of total online retail accounts from 26.8 percent in the previous year.Meantime, the number of male investors had a 50.2 percent share of total retail accounts while the remaining 49.8 percent of accounts were held by female investors. In the online space, however, female investors outnumbered their male counterparts, as the former garnered 50.9 percent of total online retail accounts while male investors had a 49.1 percent share.Most investors received an annual income of less than P500,000, accounting for 62.2 percent of retail account owners. Investors who earned between P500,000 to P1 million annually made up for 20.9 percent of retail account holders while the remaining 16.9 percent of retail investors had an income of over P1 million.Retail investors are mostly employed locally, while some are self-employed, retired, students or are working overseas. Meantime, the number of investors who are unemployed went up and accounted for 7.9 percent of retail investors in 2021 from 5.4 percent the year before.“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. We welcome and encourage them to continue with their investing activities, but we wish to remind them to have an investing mindset and not a speculative one,” Monzon added.Location-wise, 75.6 percent of retail investors are based in Metro Manila. Those who reside in Luzon accounted for 12.9 percent of retail investors while Visayas and Mindanao had a 6.8 percent and 3.5 percent share, respectively. The remaining 1.2 percent was accounted for by retail investors based outside of the country. Previously, the five main location categories had the following percent share to total accounts: Metro Manila at 75.7 percent, Luzon at 13.5 percent, Visayas at 5.7 percent, Mindanao at 3.4 percent and overseas at 1.7 percent.Retail investors who are foreign nationals are mostly citizens of Japan, China and the United States. In particular, the number of Japanese investors shot up to 37.7 percent of total foreign investors from 21.5 percent in 2020. (CSL with PR)