Stock market: The number of shareholders in Germany is shrinking again

There are once again fewer shareholders in Germany: the number has fallen for the second year in a row, but remains above the twelve million mark. On average in 2024, a good 12.1 million people in this country had stocks, stock funds and/or exchange-traded index funds (ETFs) in their portfolios, according to the German Stock Institute (DAI).

A year earlier there were more than 12.3 million, and in 2022 a record high of almost 12.9 million shareholders was reached. Is the stock market euphoria gone again?

Stock institute: “Positive long-term trend unbroken”

The stock institute in Frankfurt considers the fact that the number has remained above the twelve million mark for five years in a row as a success: This shows that “the understanding of the importance of stocks, stock funds and ETFs for retirement provision and wealth creation in Germany has increased,” says head of the Aktieninstitut Henriette Peucker.

Surveys confirm this: In a YouGov survey for HDI Insurance in the summer, one in four of the 3,748 working people aged 15 and over said that they had the greatest trust in publicly traded securities such as stocks, funds or bonds when planning for old age. The only thing that is even more in demand is your own home.

Many investors have become even more cautious

But the trend is not entirely clear: Germans are considered risk-averse – and according to a Kantar survey commissioned by the Federal Association of German Banks (BdB), the need for security has even increased. Only just under one in five (19 percent) of the 1,003 adults surveyed in December were open to taking on greater investment risk in the future in order to potentially get more out of their money. In the survey a year earlier it was 33 percent.

In the long term, a broadly diversified stock investment generates an average return of six to nine percent per year, the stock institute advertises – and is once again calling on politicians to make stocks more attractive as a retirement provision. “A look at countries like Sweden, Canada or the USA shows that a modern pension system should be based on an accumulation process in shares,” writes the institute.

For years there has been discussion in Germany about how to strengthen the stock culture. But the start of a so-called generation capital, which was intended to strengthen the statutory pension with stock returns, fell victim to the traffic light shutdown – now hopes rest on a new federal government.

There is definitely room for improvement: measured by the local population aged 14 and over, according to the stock institute’s calculations, around one in six (17.2 percent) was involved in the stock market in 2024. The stock institute explains that the number of shareholders has fallen again due to, among other things, reluctance to invest because of the uncertain economic situation and increased savings interest rates, which have made other investments more attractive again.

Savings interest rates have fallen again

In fact, overnight and fixed-term deposits have become more lucrative again since the European Central Bank ended its policy of zero and negative interest rates in the summer of 2022. But conditions have already become worse again because the ECB has significantly reduced the key interest rates that banks base themselves on.

Many Germans save like the world champions, but minus inflation, in many cases the money becomes less, not more. With more know-how, savers in this country could make more of their money, says Thomas Schaufler, Commerzbank’s board member for private customers: “We in Germany are still a long way from an investment culture like that in the USA.”

Traditionally, Germany’s savers leave huge sums of money in their checking accounts without interest or park the money in current savings accounts. According to a projection by DZ Bank, a good third (36.8 percent) of the 9.3 trillion euros in financial assets that private households in this country accumulated in 2024 are cash and deposits such as overnight money: 3,435 billion euros. At 880 billion euros, shares make up 9.4 percent of the total.

The development among younger people gives the stock institute hope: bucking the trend, the number of stock investors in the under-40 age group increased again by 150,000 to 3.7 million in 2024, after a decline a year earlier.

Stock Institute on shareholder figures Return triangles German Stock Institute Time series Key interest rates of the ECB Prices Deutsche Börse Federal Statistical Office: Savings rate Germany in an international comparison Bundesbank: Time series Financial assets Federal Statistical Office on inflation in Germany EY: Who owns the DAX? HDI analysis survey banking association