Australians Are Investing in Record Numbers — Again
A record 11.5 million Australians now invest beyond super and property, new ASX data shows — driven by ETFs, younger and female investors, and a growing reliance on AI for financial information
3 min
Australians are putting money to work outside the family home and superannuation at the highest rate since the global financial crisis — and this time, more of them are women, under-30s and first-timers than ever before.
New research from the ASX’s Australian Investor Study, released this month, puts the number of adults holding shares, ETFs, property investments, term deposits or cryptocurrency beyond their super and primary residence at 11.5 million — up from 10.2 million in 2023 and now representing 54% of the adult population. Roughly 2.5 million of those investors have entered the market since the start of the decade.
It’s a milestone ASX chief executive Anthony Attia frames as more than a personal finance story. “Investment capital helps businesses grow and create jobs,” Attia said, pointing to the importance of trusted information and well-functioning markets in sustaining the trend.
Australia out-invests the UK and Germany
By one measure, Australians are now more likely to hold listed investments than their counterparts in comparable markets: 39% of adults hold shares, ETFs or other listed investments outside super and the family home, ahead of the UK (35%) and well clear of Germany (around 20%).
The typical Australian investor earns a median $110,000 and is 46 years old — but the growth is coming disproportionately from the edges of that profile. Investors aged 18 to 29 now make up 21% of the investing population, while women have climbed to 41% of on-exchange investors, up from 38% in 2023. Four in ten investors are still building relatively modest portfolios, with 42% holding less than $100,000.
ETFs and crypto rewrite the asset mix
Shares remain the most commonly held asset, followed by residential property, but it’s ETFs and cryptocurrency reshaping the next layer down. An estimated 2.82 million Australians now hold ETFs — more than double the number in 2020 — as the local ETF industry’s assets under management swell to roughly $388 billion, on the back of record quarterly inflows of $21 billion.
Cryptocurrency isn’t far behind: an estimated 2.79 million Australians currently hold or have traded crypto in the past year, with uptake concentrated among younger investors.
The next wave looks different — and it’s mostly women
Perhaps the most striking shift is among Australians who haven’t invested yet but plan to. An estimated 950,000 non-investors intend to start within the next 12 months, and for the first time in the study’s history, women significantly outnumber men in that group — 61% to 39%. Almost four in ten intending investors are aged 18 to 29, and the typical starting amount is modest: a median $690.
Where existing investors built portfolios around direct shares, this incoming cohort is leaning toward ETFs as the easier entry point, with around a third citing ETFs as their likely first investment compared with 41% nominating direct ASX shares.
Underlying much of the shift is a familiar frustration: property. With home values still soft and affordability stretched, investing is increasingly positioned as the more accessible path to building wealth — a dynamic likely to keep pushing shares, ETFs and crypto into a bigger slice of household balance sheets.
Knowledge — and who to trust — is the real barrier
The study’s authors point to a consistent hurdle: it isn’t access or capital holding Australians back, it’s knowledge, and specifically knowing which sources of information to trust. That’s reshaping how people research decisions — investors now lean on a broader mix of advisers, brokers, digital platforms, family and friends, podcasts and, increasingly, AI tools.
This is the first year the study has measured AI use directly: 14% of investors aged 18 to 29 already use AI tools as a source of investment information. Demand for formal advice is rising in step — 37% of all investors intend to seek financial advice within 12 months, up from 32% in 2023, and among 18-to-29-year-olds that figure has jumped from 28% to 46%.
Four decades of watching Australia invest
This year’s study is the 19th in a series tracing back to the original 1986 Australian Share Ownership Study, and ASX has marked the milestone with a companion report, A nation of investors: 40 years of the ASX Australian Investor Study, charting the rise of electronic markets, online broking, investor education and the democratising effect of ETFs over four decades.
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The ASX 200 rose 1.28 per cent in the week ending 30 October as miners rallied, consumer stocks fell and rate-rise expectations climbed
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The Australian sharemarket rose during four of five sessions in the week ending 30 October, but the headline gain concealed a sharp divide between recovering miners, rate-sensitive property stocks and retailers hit by inflation and weaker trading updates.
The Australian sharemarket finished October with a positive week, although the route higher was anything but uniform.
The S&P/ASX 200 closed Friday 30 October at 8,908.1, gaining 112.9 points, or 1.28 per cent, from the previous Friday’s close of 8,795.2.
The All Ordinaries advanced 1.34 per cent to 9,025, while the more concentrated S&P/ASX 20 gained 1.11 per cent.
The benchmark rose during four of the week’s five sessions. It added 0.17 per cent on Monday and 0.46 per cent on Tuesday, before slipping 0.03 per cent on Wednesday. It recovered 0.50 per cent on Thursday and gained another 0.18 per cent on Friday.
The index briefly reached 8,933.3 but again failed to establish itself above the psychologically important 9,000-point mark.
The week’s central tension was between a resources recovery and a less forgiving domestic interest-rate outlook.
Materials gained 4.06 per cent, reclaiming part of the previous week’s heavy fall. Australian real estate investment trusts rose 3.77 per cent, financials gained 1.05 per cent and energy advanced 1.39 per cent.
At the other end of the market, consumer staples fell 5.13 per cent and consumer discretionary shares lost 2.35 per cent. Utilities declined 0.73 per cent and communication services eased 0.68 per cent.
Inflation changes the conversation
Australia’s September inflation data was the week’s pivotal domestic release.
Annual inflation of 4.3 per cent pushed market pricing towards another possible Reserve Bank increase and disrupted Wednesday’s early sharemarket rally.
By Thursday’s close, one widely followed market measure placed the probability of an increase in the cash rate to 4.85 per cent at approximately 80 per cent.
That pricing does not make an increase certain. It does, however, change the framework through which investors assess Australian businesses.
Companies dependent on discretionary household spending face renewed pressure on sales and margins. Property trusts, banks, developers and highly leveraged companies must be considered against the prospect of higher funding costs.
Banks present a more complicated equation. Higher rates can support margins, but they may also slow credit growth and increase arrears.
Miners recover
BHP gained 4.56 per cent across the week to close at $57.56, making a substantial contribution to the benchmark’s rise.
The recovery followed an 8.3 per cent fall during the previous week and helped lift the broader materials sector.
Northern Star Resources added 4.59 per cent, while Goodman Group advanced 6.85 per cent to become the strongest performer in the ASX 20.
The commodities picture was mixed. Gold fell approximately 3.12 per cent on the cited weekly measure, while Brent crude added around 0.68 per cent.
The Australian dollar was little changed at approximately US70.35 cents at the reference point.
Supermarkets and consumer shares retreat
The consumer-staples story was markedly weaker.
Coles fell 11.77 per cent after its first-quarter update, making it one of the largest significant-company declines of the week.
Woolworths lost 3.66 per cent and Wesfarmers fell 4.48 per cent to $76.69 as investors processed company trading commentary against the prospect of another squeeze on household demand.
The moves illustrate how quickly expectations can change when an apparently defensive company disappoints.
Supermarkets still benefit from the recurring need for groceries, but customers can trade down, shift between chains and reduce spending on higher-margin discretionary lines.
Wesfarmers carries exposure to several consumer categories through businesses including Bunnings, Kmart and Officeworks. A renewed rate increase would place more pressure on households already confronting higher prices.
The wider market’s biggest movements
Among companies outside the ASX 20, Mesoblast surged 27.32 per cent, SiteMinder gained 22.74 per cent and Zip rose 22.60 per cent.
The sharpest weekly falls included 4DMedical, down 33.51 per cent; Tuas, down 29.95 per cent; Catalyst Metals, down 17.47 per cent; and Champion Iron, down 13.35 per cent.
Those percentages require context.
The movements in BHP, Commonwealth Bank and other very large companies had substantially more influence on the index than similarly dramatic changes among smaller companies.
A 20 per cent move in a relatively small stock may attract more attention than a two per cent rise in a major bank, but the bank can have the greater effect on the market.
How the ASX 20 moved
The following list uses the S&P/ASX 20 constituents and five-session movements reported at the 30 October close.
Where the component feed did not publish a valid five-day comparison, no figure has been estimated.
BHP Group: Up 4.56 per cent
Commonwealth Bank: Up 1.66 per cent
Rio Tinto: Down 2.20 per cent
National Australia Bank: Up 0.48 per cent
Westpac: Up 0.08 per cent
ANZ Group: Up 1.92 per cent
CSL: Up 2.05 per cent
Macquarie Group: Up 2.19 per cent
Wesfarmers: Down 4.48 per cent
Woodside Energy: Up 1.43 per cent
Goodman Group: Up 6.85 per cent
Telstra: Five-day comparison unavailable from the cited component feed
Woolworths: Down 3.66 per cent
Fortescue: Five-day comparison unavailable from the cited component feed
Transurban: Down 2.40 per cent
QBE Insurance: Down 1.21 per cent
Aristocrat Leisure: Up 0.63 per cent
Northern Star Resources: Up 4.59 per cent
Sigma Healthcare: Down 0.36 per cent
Brambles: Down 1.20 per cent
The companies dominating the conversation
Coles was the week’s standout media-facing company for the wrong reason.
Its trading update produced an outsized repricing and drew attention across the grocery and retail sectors. Woolworths and Wesfarmers were also scrutinised as investors considered how stubborn inflation and another possible rate rise could affect sales volumes.
Bank of Queensland offered a more positive corporate signal.
The bank reported that its FY26 net interest margin had risen six basis points to 1.70 per cent, ahead of the 1.68 per cent expected by the market according to contemporaneous reporting.
Bank of Queensland shares rose 5.8 per cent on Thursday, while the major banks also rallied.
Endeavour Group finished Friday at $3.39, up 4.31 per cent on the day, and released the results of its annual general meeting.
The movement was notable during a week in which investors were highly sensitive to consumer-facing companies. The AGM result should not, however, be presented as the sole cause of the share-price increase without further supporting company guidance.
Mesoblast’s 23.4 per cent Thursday rise and 27.32 per cent weekly gain returned the biotechnology company to the centre of market attention.
For editors, it is important to separate the size of that percentage movement from its influence on the index. Mesoblast was an eye-catching performer, but it did not drive the ASX 200 in the way BHP or Commonwealth Bank did.
Qantas remained part of the broader market conversation as investors watched travel demand and company updates.
However, the primary-source review did not locate a fresh Qantas announcement that justified attributing a major weekly market movement to new company information. The airline should therefore remain on the monitoring list rather than being forced into the week’s causal narrative.
Is Australia’s IPO market reopening?
The official ASX new-listings pipeline remains active but selective.
ASX’s upcoming-floats page included formal applications with offer timetables extending through October and at least one anticipated listing on 30 November.
The exchange notes that its page covers companies for which a formal listing application has been received. It does not represent every company privately exploring a float.
The wider debate concerns whether Australia’s public market is sufficiently competitive when high-growth businesses can pursue capital in the United States or remain privately funded for longer.
ASX has previously raised possible reforms designed to improve the attractiveness of the local market. These include debate about reducing minimum free-float requirements and streamlining aspects of the admissions process.
An enhanced fast-track pathway for qualifying applicants can shorten the review process, reducing the execution risk created when market conditions change during a long IPO timetable.
That does not remove the more fundamental challenge.
New floats still require credible earnings or a convincing growth pathway, sensible pricing and enough genuine free float to support trading after listing.
Investors can already obtain diversified exposure through low-cost exchange-traded funds or buy established, liquid businesses. A float must therefore offer more than novelty.
The current pipeline suggests that the IPO window is open, but it is not indiscriminate.
What investors will watch next
The Reserve Bank’s next decision now sits at the centre of the domestic outlook.
Any change in cash-rate expectations will flow rapidly through banks, retailers, property trusts, listed developers and companies carrying substantial debt.
Investors will also watch whether the materials recovery can continue, whether BHP can hold its rebound and whether consumer companies provide further evidence of slowing demand.
Overseas, technology-sector volatility, commodity prices and the United States interest-rate outlook will continue to shape Australian trading.
The week’s 1.28 per cent headline gain was encouraging, but it was not a broad declaration of confidence.
It was a rotation towards miners, selected financials and property securities—and away from consumer businesses facing a more difficult inflation and interest-rate equation.
Market dashboard
S&P/ASX 200: 8,908.1, up 1.28 per cent for the week
All Ordinaries: 9,025, up 1.34 per cent
S&P/ASX 20: 5,214.7, up 1.11 per cent over five sessions
Best sector: Materials, up 4.06 per cent
Next-best sector: A-REITs, up 3.77 per cent
Weakest sector: Consumer staples, down 5.13 per cent
Major large-cap winner: Goodman Group, up 6.85 per cent
Major large-cap loser: Coles, down 11.77 per cent
AUD/USD: Approximately US70.35 cents at the weekly reference point
Gold: Approximately US$3,885 an ounce, down 3.12 per cent on the cited weekly measure
Brent crude: Approximately US$117.70 a barrel, up 0.68 per cent on the cited weekly measure
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