Australian Share Ownership Study

[Country Lad]

From AICD website:

A new ASX study reveals that Australian share ownership has dropped since its peak of 55 per cent of Australian adults in 2004 to 38 per cent last year.

Nonetheless, the country continues to have one of the highest levels of share ownership in the world, and most of the 6.7 million local investors in our market intend to maintain the same level of investment in 2013.

Interestingly, the study found the “perceived share market knowledge” of Australian adults had steadily declined since 2008, and for the first time since 2004, those believing they were knowledgeable dropped below 50 per cent.

Cheers
Country Lad

 

[skc]

From AICD website:

A new ASX study reveals that Australian share ownership has dropped since its peak of 55 per cent of Australian adults in 2004 to 38 per cent last year.

Nonetheless, the country continues to have one of the highest levels of share ownership in the world, and most of the 6.7 million local investors in our market intend to maintain the same level of investment in 2013.

Interestingly, the study found the “perceived share market knowledge” of Australian adults had steadily declined since 2008, and for the first time since 2004, those believing they were knowledgeable dropped below 50 per cent.

Cheers
Country Lad

The PTD from the GFC obviously didn't help. But I think one of the main contributing factor was the lack of mega-name IPOs in that period.

Every Mum and Dad had heard of Telstra or Qantas and it was easy to buy into them. This creates literally millions of new shareholders overnight. Overtime, these investors gradually exit their stocks and the number of shareholders in those companies reduces as you move further out from the float date.

Plus the survey is obviously subjected to the usual sampling error etc.

 

[McLovin]

It's a trend that is happening in the US too. People are generally more risk averse these days.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2...ge-of-Americans-owning-stocks-hits-a-low.-Why

It's probably also as skc says the government has run out of things to sell. And to be fair, with the exception of CBA, they not done any favours to the idea of public asset sales or share investment (QAN, TLS).

I guess in many instances people didn't look at the other side of the deregulation coin.