Online traders contract but frequency picks up
Following a period of decline, online share trading has picked up amongst frequent traders.
Investment Trends’ 2013 First Half Australia Online Broking Report found online share trading is more popular in Australia than the UK and the US, with almost 50 per cent of users interacting via their smart phone.
The Australian market has the second highest adoption rates of online share trading relative to the population at 3.1 per cent, behind Singapore at 4.7 per cent but ahead of the US (2.4 per cent), UK (1.4 per cent), Germany (1.2 per cent) and France (0.9 per cent).
Although the number of traders dropped from 550,000 to 530,000 in the 12 months to June, Investment Trends found a steady cohort of 40,000 frequent traders had emerged following a decline from June 2009 to December 2012.
New interest in online share trading is also apparent as 34,000 new investors placed their first online share trade in the first half of this year.
Although behind the US (57 per cent), Australia ranked second in smart phone usage for online trading at 46 per cent, followed by Singapore (41 per cent) and Germany (40 per cent).
The report showed that CommSec has secured its hold on the market, controlling 51 per cent of primary relationships compared with E TRADE’s 17 per cent, Westpac Online Investing’s 7 per cent, nabtrade’s 5 per cent and CMC Markets Stockbroking’s 4 per cent.
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