3rd March 2022

If you’re covering the ONS report published this morning, Ownership of UK Quoted Shares 2020, the following comments from Antonia Medlicott, Finance Editor at the financial comparison website, InvestingReviews.co.uk, may be of use:

“On this evidence, UK quoted shares are far more popular with investors and financial institutions based outside the UK than they are with those in it.

“This is especially the case with insurance companies, pension funds and investment trusts.

“What the data may also indicate is overseas investors seeing the UK stock market as a safe haven in 2020, as the pandemic took grip. There was a flight to safety and the UK was clearly a major destination.

“UK-resident investors appear to increasingly be looking global in their search for returns rather than in their domestic market.

“Globalisation is now embedded in UK investors’ DNA.

“This may well be because a lot of the world’s leading tech, automotive and social media stocks, such as Tesla, Apple and Meta, are based overseas and their appeal is almost magnetic for a growing number of UK investors.”

Supporting views from IFAs can be found >> here <<.