Small investors stepped back into the stock market during the second quarter, reversing a 15-month scramble for the exits, and a record number of people chose to trade online, according to a survey released today.
The quarterly Apcims/ComPeer survey said retail volumes on the London stock market have risen 21 per cent to about 45,000 trades a day, from about 30,000 a day at the start of the year. But this is still well below the 60,000 a day in early 2001 as the tech bubble reached bursting point.
The number of online clients rose to record levels of around 395,000 in the second quarter, while the number of online trades per client also increased. Online trading volume jumped 42 per cent in the second quarter to 700,000 trades.
The second-quarter turnaround tracks the overall stock market, which rallied between mid March and June as investors put behind them the war in Iraq.
Since June, stocks have traded in a broad range, and this will be reflected in third-quarter figures, which are expected to show more modest gains.
"A further quarter-on-quarter volume increase of about five percent is projected for the third quarter of 2003," the survey said.
The Apcims/ComPeer index of retail volumes rose 21 percent to 179 points, though well shy of the 203 in the same quarter of 2002 and well below the near 500 it reached at the peak of the stock market boom in early 2000.