Retail Investor Statistics - Keeping Cash at Hand

Moscow Exchange has published retail investor statistics for December. Inflows into Russian stocks were tiny at just R0.5 bln. This means that retail investors did not deploy cash received in November, when they sold R115 bln ($1.5 bln) worth of stocks to nonresidents. This should provide a good cushion for the market in the event of future setbacks, in our view.> Inflows into mutual funds accelerated to R40 bln. Around three-quarters of the amount went into bond market funds, while the equity market received around R10 bln via mutual funds.> Brokers continued to bring new clients to the market, opening 710k new accounts and bringing the total number to nearly 9 mln. The number of active brokerage accounts (performing more than one trade a month) reached 1.44 mln. These numbers suggest that the outflow in November and negligible flows in December merely represented a temporary pause, and that the trend of more retail investors coming to the market remains intact.Portfolio composition data suggests that retail investors were selling Gazprom, Nornickel and Sber to nonresidents. Retail holdings in Mail.ru Group, Aeroflot and Surgutneftegaz prefs increased.