Graphically Speaking

Taking stock of investor appetite

A quick take on the country’s evolving demat landscape and investor appetite

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Published 8 years ago on Jun 17, 2016 1 minute Read
Illustration: Shutterstock

Reaffirming the correlation between market performance and investor appetite, a recent report by CDSL shows that more demat accounts have been opened when the going is good. To begin with, the depository has close to 1.05 crore active demat accounts. In FY12, when the markets tanked close to 11%, CDSL saw an addition of 4.37 lakh demat accounts, half the number added in the previous year. With Sensex recovering the next year (8% return in FY13), 4.12 lakh new accounts were added and as the momentum continued in FY14 and FY15, with the market clocking 19% and 26% return, the number of accounts too went up. Though the primary market mop-up was the lowest in FY15, the net demat account additions were the highest. Incidentally, only 18 cities account for 40% of the accounts, with a majority of the account holders earning less Rs.5 lakh per annum. But what’s striking is that MFs are still to find fancy with investors as most prefer to hold direct equity.