Private investors fled the stock market during autumn collapse
PRIVATE investors sold off equities this autumn faster than at any point since 2006, according to new research published yesterday.
Capita Asset Services, which tracks the trading activity of 1.6m private shareholders, said yesterday that private investors offloaded £9.1bn of shares between September and November – an even faster rate than during the financial crisis.
During September to mid-October, the FTSE 100 dropped nearly 10 per cent as global troubles spooked the financial markets.
By November’s end, private investors’ total holdings had dropped to £224.4bn. “Private investors took fright on a scale far beyond that which greeted the Lehman crisis and subsequent global depression,” said Capita Asset Services’ Justin Cooper.