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Australian investing statistics 2022

48% of Australians own investments.

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By

Patricia Cruz

Edited by

Moira Daniels

Updated

Fact checked

The past few years have been a bumpy ride for investors with the wild swings in the stock market, rising property prices and the crypto crash. But even so, nearly half (48%) of the Australian adult population currently own investments. Which Aussies are investing and what are they buying? Read on to find out.

Key Australian investment statistics

  • About a quarter (24%) of Aussie investors made their first investment within the past 2 years.
  • Cash is the most popular investment (30%) followed by shares (16%).
  • Men (58%) are more likely to invest than women (39%).
  • Baby boomers are the most likely generation to hold investments at 57%.
  • Aussie investments account for 22.3% of the nominal GDP in March 2022.

Aussie investors

48% of Australians hold investments

Most popular investment

30% of Aussies invest in cash

Gender gap

Aussie men are 1.5x more likely than women to invest

Male 58%
Female 39%

What are Australians investing in?

  • 48% of Australian adults, or an estimated 9.8 million people, currently have some form of investment outside their superannuation, according to Finder's September 2022 survey.
  • About a quarter (23%) of Aussie investors made their very first investment within the past 2 years and nearly a fifth (17%) said they invested all their spare cash in the early months of the pandemic.
  • Data from the CEIC suggests that Australian investments account for 22% of the nominal GDP in March 2022. That's lower than Canada (23%) and the European Union (24%), on par with the United States and United Kingdom (22% each), and higher than Russia (15%) and Mexico (21%).
  • Cash is the most popular investment among Australians, with 30% of Aussies counting cash in their savings accounts as an investment. This is followed by shares in specific companies such as Apple or CBA (16%), term deposits and property (9% each).
  • Meanwhile, the least popular investments among Aussies include peer-to-peer lending (P2P) at just 0.8%, commodities (0.9%) and annuities (2%).

The investing gender gap

  • Men are more likely than women to have investments, with 58% of men saying they own at least one investment compared to just 39% of women.
  • Men tend to have bigger, more diversified investment portfolios than women: 61% of men describe their portfolios as diversified compared to 45% of women.
  • Women are more risk averse, with 20% preferring investments with guaranteed returns compared to 14% of men.
  • Women list a wider range of challenges faced when investing compared to men, such as fear of investment under-performance (34% of women compared to 27% of men), fear of hidden fees (32% versus 27%) and information overload (30% versus 24%).
  • Cash is king for both sexes: 37% of men invest in cash while 24% of women do the same, making it the most popular investment choice for both groups.
  • Shares are the second most popular investment for both men and women; however, men (24%) are 3 times more likely to invest in shares than women (8%).
  • Term deposits are the third most popular investment for men (13%), while property (6%) rounds off the top 3 for women.

How do different generations invest?

The older you are, the more likely you are to hold investments. Baby boomers are the most likely to own investments (57%). In fact, 43% of Australia's high value investors are aged 60 and above. They are then followed by generation X (52%), gen Y (44%) and gen Z (39%) in terms of top investors.

Cash is the most popular investment across all generations with 41% of baby boomers having cash investments, 32% for generation X, 23% for generation Y and 25% for generation Z.

Shares take the second spot for baby boomers, gen X and gen Y. 22% each of the boomers and gen X invest in shares, while 13% of gen Y say the same. However, the generations differ when it comes to the last spot in their top 3 investments.

Baby boomers place term deposits (20%) as their third most popular investment while it's property for both gen X (13%) and gen Y (10%). Gen Z's top 3 differs the most with ETFs coming in at second (8%) and shares in third (6%).

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