(123rf)
Amid the continuing market frenzy surrounding stocks, the number of young retail investors in South Korea has surged more than three times over the past 18 months, a local brokerage’s recent data showed Wednesday.
The number of small domestic investors under 20 years old came to 125,000 as of end-June, up 214 percent from the 39,000 marked at the end of 2019, according to clients’ data released by KB Securities.
The brokerage house attributed the rising figures to not only a recent bull run from the pandemic-hit market, but also as a way of increasing sons and daughters’ assets.
“So far parents have to visit brokerage branches to open their children’s accounts, but if the market expands accessibility, it can be used as more than a way to inherit assets, and also greatly contribute to the local financial market in the long-term.”
The accumulated amount of their assets also increased by 225 percent to 610 billion won ($529 million) over the cited period. Nearly 92 percent of investors under 20 years old made investments worth under 20 million won, since gift taxes are exempted under that amount here, the data showed.
KB Securities also said the recent data showed that a long-term investment in blue-chip stocks both in and out the country has been the most-preferred way of growing assets.
Overseas stocks accounted for 10.7 percent of the young investors’ property portfolios, more than double from adult investors’ investments of 4.1 percent. Investors under 20 years old also preferred to hold shares of widely known stocks such as Tesla, Walt Disney and Microsoft.
Among local shares, both adults and young investors’ most-picked investment destinations were large-cap stocks such as Samsung Electronics, Kakao and Hyundai Motor, the brokerage officials said.
The proportion of direct investment assets for the age group under 20 marked 68 percent, while adult retail investors’ reached 78 percent as of end-2019. But the value of direct investments for minority investors and regular investors increased to 87 percent and 87.1 percent, respectively, last month.
By Jie Ye-eun (
yeeun@heraldcorp.com)