Recently, ICBC released the "ICBC Investment & Wealth Management Index" of 108 for the fourth quarter 2010, slightly down 2 points compared with last quarter's. The index has been staying around 110 points for three successive quarters after advancing to a relatively high of 116 points in the first quarter of the year. The statistics echoes that the intention of urban residents to invest and accumulate wealth is relatively stable.
Judging from the three sub-indices of "ICBC Investment & Wealth Management Index", "Macro Environment Confidence Index" maintains the rally since the third quarter by edging up 1 point to 115, reflecting growing confidence towards the economy among urban residents. "Living Expectation Index" falls over 7 points to 112 from last quarter's 119. "Investment Wish Index" extends its upward rally in the last three quarters and moves slightly up 1 point to 100. This represents the steadfast rising sentiment of city folks to put more time and money to invest, and invest more.
Study on this quarter's "ICBC Investment & Wealth Management Index" reveals that urban investors are holding more investment products for the past three quarters, to the historic high of 71% in the fourth quarter. From the products invested in terms of percentages, stocks held by urban residents rise 2 percentage points to 36%, implying stock again is the highest percentage of investment products held by urban residents.
Their investments in fund, bank wealth management products and gold show slight increase. Meanwhile, in the coming six months, urban dwellers may buy more stock, and prefer not to invest in dividend-type insurance products. Investment in other products remains stable. In addition, the latest findings show that the three major reasons for urban residents to hold deposits are "retirement", "children education" and "large expenditure payout".
"ICBC Investment & Wealth Management Index" is an index compiled by ICBC to measure the confidence of urban dwellers on the macro environment and investment desires with respect to living expectation. Areas of survey for compiling the index cover 16 cities of varying economic standards. These sample cities are rotated in a certain ratio in each round of index.
The index, the thirteenth round this quarter starting from the first in 2007, serves as an authoritative and respected reference in the field today. This is the thirteenth round of the index based on the findings in the 2010 fourth quarter. The release of the index is also one key element of "Walk A Million Mile-Investment and Wealth Management", a charity cause that ICBC sponsors to spread the knowledge among the public and help the customers make sensible judgment in their financial planning and build harmonious life.
Another aim of conducting the index is to provide information to the related industries on the investment preference and behaviour of the urban investors.
