9.4 million people now hold brokerage accounts on Moscow Exchange

The number of individuals with a brokerage account on Moscow Exchange increased almost by 626,000 people in January 2021 to reach 9.4 mln people.

In January, the highest ever number of retail investors – 1.5 mln (January 2020: 425,000) – traded on MOEX.

Retail investors accounted for 41% of equity trading, 17.4% of bond trading, 14.3% of FX spot trading and 44.3% of derivatives trading.

The net asset value (NAV) of the ETFs available on MOEX was RUB 162.6 bln (USD 2.1 bln). Moscow Exchange currently offers 56 ETFs: 16 ETFs and 40 Russian-law ETFs. In January 2021, individuals invested RUB 14.3 bln in ETFs.
The number of Individual Investment Accounts (IIA) opened with Moscow Exchange as of the end of January reached 3.6 million. The trading volume of IIAs was RUB 149.5 bln, of which equities accounted for 83.5%, bonds accounted for 8.2% and ETFs accounted for 8.2%.

Among banks, Sberbank has opened the most IIAs for its customers (1.8 mln), followed by Tinkoff Bank (643,000) and VTB Bank (539,500). The leading brokerage firms in terms of IIAs opened are BCS (174,500), Otkritie Broker (more than 109,000) and Finam (73,000), and the leading asset managers are Sberbank Asset Management (245,100 IIAs), Alfa Capital (48,800) and Otkritie Broker (35,100).

The top regions by number of IIAs are Moscow (390,800 IIAs), the Moscow region (213,900) and St. Petersburg (163,700). Leaders elsewhere in Russia are Sverdlovsk region (118,100), Bashkortostan (115,500) and Krasnodar region (101,800).

In January 2021, retail investors traded RUB 28.5 bln worth of shares and RUB 50 bln worth of bonds. Corporate bonds accounted for the largest percentage of the total investments in bonds (85%), followed by government bonds (9%) (8.7% for OFZs and 0.3% for regional bonds) and Eurobonds (6%).

In January, portfolios of private investors included shares of Gazprom (19%), Sberbank ords (14.2%) and prefs (8%), Norilsk Nickel (11.6%), Lukoil (9.7%), Aeroflot (8.8%), Mail.ru Group (8.1%), Yandex (7.3%), Surgutneftegas prefs (7%) and shares of VTB Bank (6.2%).

Foreign shares in those portfolios were Alibaba (20.7%), Tesla (19.6%), Apple (13.2%), Boeing (10.2%), Pfizer (9.6%), Amazon (6%), Advanced Micro Devices (5.6%), Facebook (5.3%), Intel (5.3%) and AT&T (4.5%).

At the end of January, the top ten ETFs were iFXIT ETF on US IT shares (18.9%), Fin EX Gold ETF (FXGD) (15.2%), FXUS ETF on US shares (14.7%), FXCN ETF on Chinese stocks (13.4%), TRUR ETF on equities, bonds, money and gold (10.3%), FXRU ETF on Russian corporate USD-denominated Eurobonds (6.6%), TUSD ETF on US equities, bonds, money and gold (5.7%), FXRL ETF on the RTS Index (5.4%), FXMM ETF on the money market (4.9%) and FXDE ETF on German shares (4.8%).