Abu Dhabi: A raft of surveys indicate that women do more market research, are better at matching their investments to their goals, trade less and remain calmer during market upheavals.
The Saudi stock market recorded the entry of about 381,000 new women investors during the last two years; 37,000 last year, and 244,000 in 2019.
That brings the number of female investors’ portfolios to 1.4 million at the end of last December, compared to 1.3 million at the end of December 2019 and about one million female investors by the end of 2018.
According to the Capital Market Authority, the number of individuals investing in the stock market reached a record level of 5.6 million by the end of 2020, including 1.4 million women (24.8 per cent), and 4.2 million men.
On a quarterly basis, the number of women who have investment portfolios in the stock market increased by 14,000 in Q4 2020.
The number of individual investors in the Saudi stock market increased to about 5.5 million investors Q2 2020 compared to 4.7 million investors in the same quarter of 2019, an increase of 17 per cent, a steady increase for the fourth consecutive quarter. The increase came after a jump in the number of female investors to 1.7 million, an increase of about 64 per cent compared to the same quarter of 2019.
The number of male investors increased to 4.2 million investors in Q2 2020 compared to 3.7 million investors during the same quarter of 2019, an increase of 12 per cent.
The number of individual investors increased 0.3 per cent compared to 5.5 million investors in Q1 2020.
On the other hand, the number of males in the Saudi stock market increased to 4.2 million, an increase of 73,000 investors, compared to the previous year, where their number was 4.124 million, and their number increased by about 27,000 investors compared to the Q3 2020, which was 4.17 million.
Annual growth
During the last 4 years, the number of female investor portfolios grew from 989,708 women in 2017 to about 1,008,054 in the following year, up to 1,352,000 by the end of 2019 and then 1,389,000 female investors in 2020, a growth rate of 2.7 per cent over 2019.
