(BFM Bourse) – The tumult of the markets has deterred small investors from taking action. Between July and September, the number of retail investors active on the stock market fell to its lowest level since the summer of 2020, reports the Autorité des marchés financiers in its latest quarterly survey.
This summer, the “small” carriers preferred to bask in the sun rather than suffer bad weather on the financial markets. In the third quarter, the number of retail investors active on the stock market fell by more than a third compared to the second, reveals the eighth edition of the Dashboard of active retail investors from the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF).
Since January 2021, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has published a scoreboard of retail investors active on the financial markets during the previous quarter every three months. It makes it possible to monitor changes in the behavior of individual investors.
In the third quarter of 2022, only 600,000 retail investors made a purchase or sale on the equity markets, a level comparable to that of the same quarter of 2020 (604,000). They were 35% fewer to take action than in the second quarter (931,000) and 23% fewer than in the third quarter of 2021 (783,000).
Although the activity of individuals on the stock market is traditionally weaker during the summer months, the sharp drop observed by the AMF reflects “a certain wait-and-see attitude” of investors who have “maintained their positions” in a context of market decline for the third consecutive quarter”, adds the policeman of the French financial markets.
Waiting for the storm to pass
Between July and September, 485,000 investors bought shares, a number which fell by 19% over a quarter to land at its lowest level since the third quarter of 2020. On the other hand, the number of new individual investors, who had never placed a stock market order before or had been inactive since January 2018, stood at 39,000, “in the average of the figures observed in the third quarter in recent years” notes the AMF.
In a context of further market decline, investors preferred to hunker down. The number of sellers of shares fell sharply, by 43% over one quarter, to reach 362,000 against 639,000 in the second quarter. This number is significantly lower than the number of buyers – by 485,000n therefore – which shows a positive buyer-seller balance.
As for the number of transactions carried out by individuals on shares, it also fell, as usual in the third quarter, specifies the AMF. Investors carried out 8.8 million transactions, a level which remains significantly lower than that of the same quarters of the two previous years, “without however falling back to the levels of 2018 or 2019”, concludes the AMF.
Sabrina Sadgui – ©2022 BFM Bourse