KARACHI: The National Clearing Company of Pakistan (NCCPL) has set the long-held speculation on the number of investors who trade at the Pakistan Stock Exchange at rest.

The clearing company disclosed on its website that the active Unique Identification Numbers (UINs) — allotted to each investor — as of April 30, 2021 stood at 252,322.

These include individual accounts at 232,799; corporate company accounts 1,722; fund/others 1,436; foreign individuals 12,356 and accounts opened through the Roshan Digital Account (RDA) 3,778.

The significant number is the corporate/individual brokers who have 231 accounts at their command. In April 3,093 individual UINs were opened while 1,113 were closed. Figures for corporate company were 22 and 24; brokers 5 and 1; funds 18 and 31; foreign individuals 271 and 106 and account opened through RDA were 531 and 14.

PSX has only 12,356 foreign players; 3,778 accounts opened through RDA

Total UINs registered during January were 2,828, February 5,467; March 5,606, 3,783. On average, new accounts opened per month comes to 4,421.

Mohammad Sohail, CEO of Top­line Securities, tweeted: “Finally market participants now know how many broker accounts are opened on regular basis”.

He stated that (roughly) 4,000 new accounts a month (opened by investors) is lower than potential while (roughly) 253,000 stock investors at PSX in spite of post Covid-19 recovery was much too small and new investors were required to be attracted to the market.

A major participant said that the only encouraging number was the new foreign investors who have started opening accounts and trade at the market under the RDA.

Incidentally, much of the foreign buying in the recent months was made by the foreign Pakistani investors who compensated for the outflow of investment by foreign funds.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2021