Almost a quarter of investors on the BVB held only government bonds at the end of last year

Almost a quarter of investors on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) held only government bonds at the end of last year, according to data from the latest report of the Investor Compensation Fund (FCI).

According to the document, the number of investor accounts on the local stock exchange increased by 26% between December 2024 and December 2025, reaching 285,582 accounts at the end of last year, based on records from BVB brokers. This compares with 274,412 accounts in September last year and 226,057 accounts in the final month of 2024. Of these, 63,171 accounts contained only government bonds issued by the Romanian state through the Ministry of Finance, representing 22.1% of the total number of accounts at the end of last year. These holdings relate to the Fidelis program, which has had monthly issues starting last year. Naturally, there are more investors on the BVB who hold Fidelis bonds, but since they also own other financial instruments-mainly shares-they are not included in the statistics published by the Fund.

Last year, retail investors lent the state 21 billion lei through the Fidelis program, equivalent to 8% of Romania's financing needs for 2025.

The FCI classifies investors into fully compensable investors, whose portfolios are below the euro20,000 ceiling, investors compensable up to the ceiling, and non-compensable investors. At the end of December last year, there were 191,566 accounts belonging to fully compensable investors (up 23% compared with December 2024), while the number of accounts held by investors compensable up to the ceiling stood at 92,646-its highest level since December 2010, the earliest data provided by the FCI-according to our analysis.

The average portfolio of a fully compensable investor amounted to euro4,087 at the end of December 2025, up 4% compared with the winter of 2024, while the average portfolio of an investor compensable up to the ceiling was around euro181,977.

Although the number of accounts is approaching 300,000, the number of active investors is lower. At the end of September last year, there were 145,520 active accounts at investment services firms, according to data from the latest capital market report issued by the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF).

An account is considered active if at least one transaction has been carried out through it in the past six months. An investor may simultaneously hold accounts with several intermediaries.

It should also be noted that the information published by the Investor Compensation Fund is based on data reported by the fund's members and does not take into account whether an investor uses one or more intermediaries; as a result, the total number of investors is lower.