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 relatively high. The latest data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange show that the number of new accounts opened for A-shares on the Shanghai market in March this year exceeded 4.6 million, up 82.38% month-over-month and 50.10% year-over-year. In the first quarter, the cumulative number of new accounts opened for Shanghai A-shares reached 12.0402 million, up 61.15% year-over-year.

Since January, new account openings for Shanghai A-shares have shown a trend of “opening strong, pulling back, and then rising again.” In January, the number of accounts opened was 4.9158 million. In February, affected by fewer trading days during the Spring Festival holiday, it fell to 2.52M. In March, it rebounded sharply to 4.6014 million. Judging from the structure of new account openings in March, retail investors opened 4.5882 million accounts, while institutions opened 13.2k accounts; retail investors remain the main force. In addition, in March, the number of new account openings for Shanghai B-shares was 1.2k, while new fund account openings were 394k.

In March, the overall A-share market showed a pattern of surging up, then pulling back, and stabilizing with consolidation. Although the benchmark index performed relatively weakly, the market offered many structural opportunities. Sectors such as power, pharmaceuticals, computing power, and chemicals rotated and strengthened, which to some extent boosted the willingness of incremental capital to enter the market.

In the first quarter of this year, the year-over-year increase in the number of new accounts for Shanghai A-shares exceeded 60%, directly boosting brokerages’ commission brokerage business. A senior manager of the Shenzhen branch of a mid-sized brokerage told Securities Times reporter that in the first quarter, overall market trading activity was active, and the brokerage commission business at the branch achieved a fairly noticeable growth.

A research report from CITIC Securities and Investment believes that, from a long-term perspective, the concentration of new account growth and heavy volume will lay a foundation of incremental capital for the A-share rally, and will continue to inject long-term momentum. Dongwu Securities also said that, benefiting from an improvement in trading volume on a month-over-month basis and a more active capital market, it expects brokerage firms’ first-quarter performance to continue with high growth.

Some brokerages have already released optimistic expectations first. Dongguan Securities, in its updated prospectus, disclosed that it expects to achieve operating revenue of 861 million yuan to 952 million yuan in the first quarter of this year, up 26.62% to 39.95% year-over-year; and attributable net profit of 331 million yuan to 366 million yuan, up 63.06% to 80.23%. The main drivers of the expected profit increase are that, in the first quarter, the one-sided trading value of stocks and funds rose significantly year-over-year, which is expected to boost both commission net income from the brokerage business and net interest income, with both also expected to increase year-over-year.