Last year was once again an exceptional period for the stock market activity of French individuals, confirm the latest data from the Autorité des marchés financiers.
Mainly driven by the surge in the CAC 40, an annual increase of nearly 30%, the number of transactions carried out by households on financial instruments authorized in France exceeded its previous record of 2020 to reach 1.714 million transactions on shares, ETFs, bonds, certificates and warrants, compared to 1.498 million recorded last year.
The last quarter of 2021, slightly below the third quarter on the equity market alone, confirmed investors’ enthusiasm for the financial markets: from October to the end of December, 743,000 people placed at least one order on a share, including 562,000 on purchase. A small part of this activity – 52,000 – having been carried out by newcomers. Over this period, orders for ETFs and certificates/warrants increased slightly compared to the previous quarter, while those for equities and bonds fell slightly.
3 million French people have invested in shares in three years
The number of transactions carried out in France by individuals on shares listed in the European Union remained higher in Q4 compared to Q3 (12.91 million against 11.36 million in Q3, but under the activity of the 4th quarter 2020, particularly strong, at 17.26M).
According to the AMF, over four years, nearly three million invested in equities between the beginning of 2018 and the end of 2021. On the other hand, activity lost momentum in ETFs last year compared to 2019 and 2020, just like the number of transactions made on bonds, which has been falling continuously for four years in parallel with the fall in the yields of these products.
The coronavirus, a turning point for stock market activity
The coronavirus crisis has given a boost to the interest shown by individuals in the financial markets. The fall in the markets in March 2020 was an entry point for many new investors (who had never made a transaction or not since January 2018), who have remained since.
This influx of investors has benefited the major “traditional” banking players, their online competitors (Boursorama, IG, Bourse Direct, BinckBank, etc.), but also and above all “neo-brokers”, young digital brokerage firms, all registered outside France, and having the particularity of offering free or almost free fees to their customers.
A plummeting average age
Traditional players continue to capture the majority of transactions, but this share is tending to dwindle in favor of these young fintechs. In the 3rd quarter of 2021, traditional banks thus drained 44.9% of the 21.59 million financial transactions carried out over this period, online banks and brokers 33.3% and neo-brokers 21.8%, while the latter accounted for less than 10% of transactions three years ago.
The wave of arrivals observed with the Covid has also caused the average age of stockbrokers to drop quite drastically: this has fallen by 8 years in three years (!) to drop it today below the 50-year-old mark (49.8) against 58.1 years in October 2018.