Incremental funds actively entering the market; new A-share accounts in Shanghai in March increased by over 50% year-on-year

Securities Times reporter Hu Feijun

Since 2026, trading activity in the A-share market has remained active, and investors’ enthusiasm for entering the market has been high. Latest data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange shows that the number of new accounts opened for Shanghai A-shares in March this year exceeded 4.60 million, up 82.38% month over month and up 50.10% year over year. In the first quarter, the cumulative number of new accounts opened for Shanghai A-shares totaled 12.04 million, up 61.15% year over year.

Since January, new accounts opened for Shanghai A-shares have shown a trend of “opening high, pulling back, and then rising again.” In January, the number of accounts opened was 4.9158 million. In February, it fell back to 2.523 million due to fewer trading days during the Spring Festival holiday. In March, it rebounded sharply to 4.6014 million. Judging from the structure of new accounts opened in March, individual investors opened 4.5882 million accounts and institutions opened 1.32 million accounts, with individual investors remaining the main force. In addition, in March, the number of new accounts opened for Shanghai B-shares was 0.12 million, and the number of new accounts opened for funds was 39.4 million.

In March, Shanghai A-shares overall followed a pattern of surging high and then pulling back, followed by steady consolidation. Although the benchmark index performed relatively weakly, there were more opportunities in the market on a structural basis. Sectors such as power, pharmaceuticals, computing power, and chemicals rotated and strengthened, to a certain extent sparking stronger willingness among incremental funds to enter the market.

In the first quarter of this year, the year-over-year growth rate in the number of new accounts opened for Shanghai A-shares exceeded 60%, directly boosting securities firms’ brokerage businesses. A general manager of the Shenzhen branch of a mid-sized securities firm told Securities Times reporter Hu Feijun that in the first quarter the overall market trading activity was active, and the branch’s brokerage business achieved a relatively noticeable increase.

A research report from China Securities Development Investment Research believes that, in the long run, the concentrated surge in new account openings has laid a foundation for incremental capital to support the A-share market’s performance, and will continue to inject long-term momentum. Dongwu Securities also said that benefiting from the month-over-month improvement in trading volume and the increased activity in the capital market, it expects securities firms’ first-quarter performance to continue to grow at a high rate.

Some securities firms have already released optimistic expectations first. In its updated prospectus, Dongguan Securities disclosed that it expects to achieve operating revenue of CNY 8.61 billion to CNY 9.52 billion in the first quarter of this year, up 26.62% to 39.95% year over year; and attributable net profit of CNY 3.31 billion to CNY 3.66 billion, up 63.06% to 80.23% year over year. The expected profit increase is mainly because in the first quarter, the year-over-year increase in the one-sided trading value of stocks and funds was significantly higher, which is expected to drive year-over-year growth in both net brokerage fee income and net interest income.