Digital trading bumps PSE accounts toward 3-M mark
The number of accounts at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) neared the 3-million mark last year. This meant a 50-percent surge as more retail investors, particularly millennials and Gen Zs, joined through digital platforms.
PSE, the operator of the local bourse, said accounts reached 2.86 million in 2024, representing the highest tally since the company began tracking investor count in 2008.
The surge was due mainly to online accounts soaring by 62 percent to 2.47 million.
Data from the PSE also showed that the average value of online trades rose by 7.9 percent to P50,746.82. Offline transactions, on the other hand, averaged P99,823.86, up by 4.5 percent.
“This substantial growth was made possible by the enabling of digital platforms to connect to PSE’s trading engine, thereby facilitating the trading by investors in the market,” PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon said in a statement over the weekend.
Retail investors accounted for 98.9 percent of the total count, while institutional investors comprised the remaining 1.1 percent.
Local investors owned around 99 percent of the accounts.
Investor profile
Millennials, or those aged 30 to 44, again dominated the number of accounts, cornering 48.8 percent of the total from 45.6 percent previously.
This age group also comprised 51.6 percent of online accounts, up from 49 percent in 2023.
Older Gen Zs, or the 18- to 29-year-olds, were the second biggest age group at 26.5 percent of the total, from 19.5 percent previously.
They owned 28.4 percent of online accounts, up from 21.5 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of investors within the 45 to 59 age range dipped to 17.4 percent from 20.2 percent. Those aged 60 and above also shrunk to 7.3 percent from 14.8 percent.
Those earning less than P500,000 a year took up the largest portion of retail accounts at 82.4 percent, up from 70.9 percent.
Investors making more than P1 million decreased to 10.9 percent from 14.7 percent.
Lastly, those earning between P500,000 and P1 million also slipped to 6.7 percent from 14.4 percent.
“We continue to see the impact of partnerships between PSE-accredited trading participants and digital platforms as we see a younger and more geographically diverse investor base,” Monzon said.
In 2023, the PSE recognized the efforts of e-wallet platforms in making stock trading more accessible to retail investors, particularly GCash.
The Ayala-backed company currently allows its users to invest in local stocks through its G-Invest feature, whose GStocks trading platform was launched in 2022. As of the first quarter of this year, GStocks had around 1.2 million users.
