Personal Sector Investment in Financial Assets: Practices And Preferences Available to Purchase

Over the past three decades, considerable disquiet has been expressed by many commentators over a movement away from financial asset‐holding by the personal sector and a concomitant institutionalization of the financial and stock markets. To a large extent, that concern has been occasioned by a concentration of interest on the equity market as a surrogate for all financial asset markets, and the burgeoning equity trading activities of the life companies and pension funds have served to bolster the arguments that private individuals are turning away from traditional forms of financial asset‐holding.