Determinants of Private Investors’ Behavior on Russian Stock Market

Abstract

The article explores behavior features of different group of private investors on the Moscow and Saint Petersburg stock exchanges. It was found that the change in the size of the biggest group of registered broker clients on Moscow Exchange depended heavily on growth of real income and key characteristics of passive forms of income, such as deposit rates, government bond returns and stock dividend yield. Active broker clients on the Moscow stock exchange mainly focused on more speculative factors, such as equity premium, equity volatility, foreign stocks’ returns and exchange rate. The growth of individual investment accounts depended on factors of both active and speculative forms of income. The quantity of broker clients on Saint-Petersburg Exchange relied on an even wider set of factors, which included not only risk and returns on national markets, but also characteristics of foreign assets and exchange rates. The two Russian exchanges are interrelated. The bond and equity premium growth makes the national market more attractive than foreign assets. The expansion of private investors on the stock market in Russia, which began in 2018, is explained not only by a search for other investment instruments apart from deposits, especially under the ongoing decline in interest rates, but also by a growing interest in individual investment accounts. The latter represent a positive example of state influence on people’s savings through tax policy. Another factor of the raise of private investments was the implementation of modern investment platforms and active promotion of broker services by major banks. The financial crisis which begun in March 2020 can become a serious challenge for millions of private investors who had opened accounts in the previous two years.