Trees certainly do not rise to the sky, as the stock market saying goes, but the Booklet A seems tempted to defy the laws of nature since the start of the health crisis …
In March 2021, 2.80 billion euros came to inflate the amounts placed on this tax-exempt booklet. This is the net inflow – deposits minus withdrawals. By adding the collection of the Sustainable and Solidarity Development Booklet (LDDS), in the amount of 870 million euros, this brings to 3.67 billion the gain recorded last month by these two booklets, according to data published on Wednesday 21 April by the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.
With these 2.80 billion, the Livret A certainly did less well than in January and February, months during which 6.32 billion and 2.86 billion euros had respectively been garnered, but it signs its best month of March in ten years, says the institution.
44 billion in 13 months
However, it is the accumulation of sums collected over the months that especially makes you dizzy. Nearly 15 billion euros (14.63 billion to be exact) were indeed collected in the first quarter of 2021 by the two passbooks – 11.98 billion on the Livret A and 2.65 billion on the LDDS.
We have to go back to 2013 to find a score of the same ilk for a first quarter: 16.05 billion had then been collected during the first three months that year, including 11.54 billion on the Livret A. in particular, at the time: increases in the payment ceilings of these regulated savings products.
In thirteen months, i.e. since early March 2020, the month of the first confinement, almost 44 billion have been collected on the two booklets, or an average of 3.4 billion per month. By way of comparison, the average monthly collection before the crisis was 1.4 billion in 2019 and 1.1 billion in 2018.
Enough to skyrocket the outstanding amount of these passbooks, that is to say the total amount invested in them: it reached at the end of March 338.5 billion euros for the Livret A alone and 462.9 billion taking into account the LDDS.
If the year 2020 had turned out to be extraordinary for the two booklets, with more than 35 billion euros collected in total, that is to say twice more than in 2019, even though their rate of remuneration fell to 0.5 %, its historic low, the trend does not seem to be running out of steam in 2021.
To the same causes, the same effects, in all likelihood: since the first confinement in March 2020, health restrictions restrict the possibilities of consumption, in particular for unconstrained expenditure (leisure, restaurants, travel, etc.), and boost the saving.
At the same time, uncertainties concerning the health situation and the economic context do not dry up, and this logically favors liquid investments (from which money can be withdrawn at any time) and without risk. Not to mention that the current high stock market can dampen the enthusiasm of savers willing to take risks and invest for the long term.