Covid has increased the propensity of Italians to trade online, also changing the average profile of active investors in Piazza Affari. Consob writes it in a study conducted in collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, from which it emerges that "restrictions related to lockdowns they were accompanied by a general increased interest in the stock market Italian, as evidenced by the volume of trade by individual investors".
The research focuses on individual investors in Italian equities in the period January 2019 - September 2021, analyzing how their composition and behavior changed during the lockdown (9 March - 19 May 2020) and more generally in the period of the pandemic.
The identikit of new traders: young, male and (on average) more skilled
The comparison reveals that, with the arrival of the Covid-related restrictions, they debuted on the MTA of Borsa Italiana around 185 thousand new investors: individuals who, prior to 2019, had never bought or sold shares. This is a rather high percentage, considering that, in all, there were just over 560 active traders in those months. Furthermore, compared to the profile of traditional investors – those who traded even before the pandemic – the new patrol is made up of people with some particular characteristics:
- are younger (and quite a bit: the average difference is 10 years);
- la percentage of males he is superior among them;
- are more skilled in trading, in the sense that they are more capable of making a profit.
Most of these new traders continued to trade even after the restrictions lifted, thus permanently enlarging the pool of retail investors. In parallel, of course, the volumes traded by retail traders have also increased.
Online trading like smart working: restrictions have accelerated change
According to the authors of the study, this set of changes is essentially linked to technological innovation: it can therefore be hypothesized that the Covid lockdown "worked as a accelerator of something that would probably have occurred on a longer time scale, similarly to the adoption of smart working".
In general, the restrictions related to the pandemic “gave driving the digital transition in finance, supporting the growth of FinTech and making online trading more commonly used by investors – continues the study – Here, for the first time, we demonstrate that they also had the merit of attract young people who were not previously interested in investing. Most of them then continued to be present in the market, and this is even more important, as retail investors are essential to sustain the supply of liquidity, especially in turbulent times”.
For this reason, the study concludes, "the renewal of investors triggered by Covid is a sign of the state of health of the Italian market", even if "the prevalence of men in the audience of new traders the gender gap increases in financial activities.
