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

Since January, new accounts for Shanghai A-shares have followed a trend of “opening high, pulling back, and then surging again.” The number of accounts opened in January was 4.9158 million. In February, it fell to 2.52M due to fewer trading days during the Spring Festival holidays. In March, it rebounded sharply to 4.6014 million. Judging from the structure of new accounts in March, individual investors opened 4.5882 million accounts, while institutions opened 13.2k accounts. Individual investors remain the main force. In addition, in March, new accounts for Shanghai B-shares were 1.2k, while new fund accounts were 394k.

In March, the overall A-share market showed a pattern of rallying high then pulling back, followed by stabilizing and consolidating. Although the benchmark index performed relatively weakly, there were still many structural opportunities in the market. Sectors such as power, pharmaceuticals, computing power, and chemicals rotated and strengthened, to a certain extent boosting the willingness of incremental capital to enter.

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

In a research report, Citic Securities Construction Investment said that in the long run, the concentrated surge in new account openings has laid a solid foundation of incremental capital for 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 heightened activity in the capital market, it expects brokerage firms’ first-quarter performance to continue to grow strongly.

Some brokerage firms have already released optimistic expectations first. In its updated prospectus, Dongguan Securities disclosed that it expects to achieve operating revenue of RMB 861 million to RMB 952 million in the first quarter of this year, representing growth of 26.62% to 39.95% year over year; attributable net profit of RMB 331 million to RMB 366 million, representing growth of 63.06% to 80.23%. The increase in performance is mainly attributable to a sharp year-over-year rise in one-sided trading value of stocks and funds in the first quarter, which is expected to drive both brokerage commission net income and net interest income to grow year over year.

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