Private investors traded RUB 1.35 trillion in Russian securities on MOEX in 2021

The number of individuals with a brokerage account on Moscow Exchange almost doubled in 2021, reaching nearly 17 million, more than 10% of Russia's population. Private investors hold 27.7 million brokerage accounts on Moscow Exchange.

In 2021, private investor activity reached an all-time high, with 2 million people trading on Moscow Exchange monthly.

For the full year 2021, total trading volume on Moscow Exchange markets reached an all-time high and exceeded RUB 1 quadrillion for the first time (up 6,6% on 2020). Retail investors accounted for 40% of equity trading volume, 10.1% of bond trading volume, 12.4% of FX spot trading volume and 43.4% of derivatives trading volume.

The number of exchange-traded funds listed on Moscow Exchange increased more than 2.5 times to 138 in 2021: 114 Russian-law ETFs and 24 ETFs, of which 74 Russian-law ETFs and eight ETFs are admitted to trading in 2021.

The number of Individual Investment Accounts (IIA) opened with Moscow Exchange as of the end of 2021 reached 4.9 million. 1.4 million IIAs were opened in 2021. The trading volume of IIAs reached RUB 1.6 trln, of which equities accounted for 87.4%, bonds accounted for 5.4% and ETFs accounted for 7.2%.
The top regions by number of IIAs were Moscow (527,2 00 IIAs), the Moscow region (298,000) and St. Petersburg (228,600). Leaders elsewhere in Russia were Sverdlovsk region (159,300), Bashkortostan (155,600) and Krasnodar region (144,800).

In 2021, retail investors traded RUB 532 bln worth of shares and RUB 819 bln worth of bonds. Corporate bonds accounted for the largest percentage of total investments in bonds (80.7%), followed by government bonds (15.4%) and Eurobonds (3.9%).

In 2021, the Private Investor Portfolio[1] included shares of Gazprom (32.2%), Sberbank ords (16.8%) and prefs (6.2%), Norilsk Nickel (12.5%), Lukoil (8.6%), VTB Bank (5.4%), Surgutneftegas prefs (5.2%), MMK (4.5%), NLMK (4.4%), Severstal (4.1%).

Sberbank shares were the most popular Russian stock by number of shareholders (1.2 million) among private investors registered on Moscow Exchange since 2015 who account for over 96% of the total number of all private investors. The top 15 shares also include: Gazprom shares (979,000), VTB (590,000), Aeroflot (527,000), ALROSA (503,000), Severstal (476,000), Tatneft (475,000), MTS (420,000), MMK (398,000), NLMK (388,000), Polymetal (371,000), Yandex (364,000), Moscow Exchange (360,000), Rosneft (323,000) and LUKOIL (321,000).

Foreign stocks in those portfolios stood at Alibaba (27%), Tesla (14,2%), Apple (12,1%), Baidu (9,2%), Boeing (6,9%), NVDA (6,5%), Virgin Galactic (6,4%), Microsoft (6,2%), Intel (5.9%) and Meta (5,6%).

At the end of 2021, the top ten ETFs in portfolios of retail investors were: FXUS ETF on US shares (14,7%), FXIT ETF on US IT shares (14.1%), TRUR ETF on Russian equities, bonds, money and gold (12.5%), AKSP ETF on the S&P 500 Index (12%), FXCN ETF on Chinese stocks (11.6%), Gold ETF FXGD (8.8%), VTBM ETF on money market (6.9%), AKNX ETF on the Nasdaq Index (6.8%), TUSD ETF on US shares, bonds, money and gold (6.7%), TSPX ETF on the S&P 500 Index (5.9%).