Investment behavior in the wake of COVID-19

Purpose and goal:

The aim of the project has been to identify how, and if, equity investors have made any changes in their equity portfolios as a result of Covid-19. Through access to detailed data related to stock ownership, we have quantified the impact of the pandemic for large shareholders, "monitoring institutional shareholders", i.e. institutional investors who have a large fraction of their assets under managed in a company. We have also quantified changes in stock portfolios for individuals.

Expected results and effects:

Our results show that the number of individuals, or retail investors with a direct share ownership in Swedish listed companies increased sharply surrounding the pandemic. In addition, the number of retail investors who invested in shares for the first time also increased. We also report a positive relationship between the occurrence of extreme days and share ownership for institutional owners.

Approach and implementation:

The study analyzes share ownership in Swedish listed companies in connection with Covid-19 during the period 2020 up to and including the third quarter of 2022. With access to official data regarding the extent of confirmed Covid-19 cases, the correlation between degree of Covid-19, as well as degree of occurrence of extreme days, and share ownership have been analyzed using multivariate analysis for different categories of shareholders.

Institutional shareholders with a large relative shareholding have been analysed. Private individuals´ shareholdings have been analysed.