Davies: Less than 20% of Bahamians invest, but activity increasing

Fewer than 20 percent of Bahamians are actively participating in the local investment community, industry stakeholders revealed yesterday.

It’s why the Bahamas International Securities Exchange (BISX) and RF Bank and Trust have partnered for World Investor Week – to educate Bahamians on the benefits of investing.

BISX Chief Executive Officer Keith Davies said while it’s fair to say only roughly ten to 15 percent of Bahamians are investing on the capital markets, there has been steady growth over the past few decades.

“I think that’s fair. But I will say this, the level of activity over the years has incrementally increased. I use the term small, positive, incremental steps and that is what we have seen in the marketplace through just transactions alone and volume we see an uptick every year over the last 20 years,” he said while appearing as a guest on the Guardian Radio talk show Z Live with host Zhivargo Laing.

Davies continued, “We don’t have an exact number. We did this exercise in conjunction with the Securities Commission several years ago, and it’s quite a bit. There’s a lot of indirect investing through pensions and other schemes. Hotel workers for example and a number of other large institutions have investments or accounts through our broker dealer members, so there’s a lot of indirect investments. We see that typically the younger population tends to gravitate towards the market as well, the older population tends to be more settled in investing in the passive type income. So, I can’t put a specific number on it but we suspect that a lot of it is indirect.”

When the BISX All-Share Index closed at the end of June, market capital stood at $8.299 billion and the average volume per trading day was 55,331 shares for a value of $281,907.85.

A recent study conducted by investor experts BrookerChooser found that women accounted for 36 percent of investors in The Bahamas and men 64 percent. This positions The Bahamas as having the sixth highest proportion of female investors in the world.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/davies-less-than-20-of-bahamians-invest-but-activity-increasing/