Almost 5 mln people started investing on Moscow Exchange in 2020
In 2020, almost 5 mln new retail investors joined Moscow Exchange, more than all previous years put together. This brought the total number of individuals with a brokerage account on MOEX to 8.8 mln.
Retail investor activity also grew consistently throughout 2020: in December 2020, 1.4 people traded on the Exchange versus 392,000 people in December 2019.
Annual trading volumes on the Equity Market reached an all-time high of RUB 23.9 trln, an almost twofold increase YoY. Retail investors accounted for 40.6% of equity trading, 13% of bonds trading, 12.3% of FX spot trading and 42% of derivatives trading.
The net asset value (NAV) of ETFs available for trading on MOEX in 2020 was RUB 145.7 bln (USD 2 bln). The 55 ETFs available for trading include 16 ETFs and 39 Russian-law ETFs, of which three ETFs and 20 Russian-law ETFs were added in 2020. In 2020, investments in ETFs grew more than fivefold and reached RUB 90 bln (RUB 17 bln in 2019).
The number of Individual Investment Accounts (IIA) opened with Moscow Exchange as of the end of 2020 reached 3.5 million. More than 1.8 mln IIAs were opened in 2020. The trading volume of IIAs exceeded RUB 1.4 trln. Equities accounted for 85.6% of total trading volume, bonds accounted for 10.1% and ETFs accounted for 4%.
Among banks, Sberbank has opened the most IIAs for its customers (1.7 mln IIAs), followed by Tinkoff Bank (645,100) and VTB Bank (523,900). The leading brokerage firms in terms of IIAs opened are BCS (172,300), Otkritie Broker (more than 106,700) and Finam (72,700), and the leading asset managers are Sberbank Asset Management (214,300 IIAs), Alfa Capital (47,200) and Region Group (34,600).
The top regions by number of IIAs are Moscow (378,300 IIAs), the Moscow region (208,500) and St. Petersburg (158,500). Leaders elsewhere in Russia are Sverdlovsk region (115,100), Bashkortostan (113,300) and Krasnodar region (98,500).
In 2020, retail investors traded RUB 301 bln worth of Russian shares and RUB 617 bln worth of bonds. Corporate bonds accounted for the largest percentage of the total investments in bonds (88.5%), followed by government bonds (7.5%) (6.5% for OFZs and 1% for regional bonds) and Eurobonds (4%).
The most popular Russian shares held in portfolios of private investors included Gazprom (23.1%), Lukoil (11.8%), Norilsk Nickel (11.3%), Sberbank ords (10.5%) and prefs (8%), Aeroflot (8.2%), Mail.ru Group DRs (7.4%), Surgutneftegas prefs (4.8%), MTS (6.5%) and VTB Bank (6.3%).
Foreign shares in those portfolios were Alibaba (29.5%), Pfizer (11.6%), Apple (11.1%), Tesla (9.9%), Intel (8%), Boeing (7.7%), Amazon (7%), NVIDIA (5.1%), AT&T (5.1%) and American Airlines (4.9%).
At the end of 2020, the top ten ETFs were iFXIT ETF on US IT shares (19.4%), Fin EX Gold ETF (FXGD) (15.5%), FXUS ETF on US shares (14.6%), FXCN ETF on Chinese stocks (12.7%), TRUR ETF on Russian equities, bonds, money and gold (9.6%), FXRU ETF on Russian corporate USD-denominated Eurobonds (6.7%), TUSD ETF on US shares, bonds, money and gold (5.9%), FXRL ETF on the RTS Index (5.7%), FXMM ETF on the money market (5.1%), and SBMX ETF on the MOEX Russia Index (4.9%).