The total number of domestic real investors at Borsa Istanbul Stock Exchange (BIST) last year increased significantly, while the number of millionaires decreased.

According to Monday's data compiled from the Central Registry Agency (CRA), the number of domestic real investors increased by 87,194 people compared to the previous year, reaching 1.2 million, while the number of millionaires decreased by 539 people.

In 2018, the total portfolio of domestic investors with accounts in the stock market fell to TL 61.1 billion. The total portfolio of the same investor group was over TL 65 billion at the end of 2017.

The number of millionaires among domestic real investors dropped by 539 to 5,653 in 2018 due to the average 20.9 percent decrease in share markets. It was a noteworthy development that the millionaires, which accounted for only 5 percent of the total, held 55 percent of the total portfolio size of the domestic investors in the stock market.

The investors with a portfolio of over TL 100,000 constituted only 6.3 percent of the total with 72,968 people, whereas their share in the total portfolio reached 83 percent.

Meanwhile, the share of more than 1 million investors with a portfolio of TL 50,000 did not even reach 10 percent in the total portfolio. According to year-end data, the number of investors with a portfolio size below TL 50,000 was around 1 million, totaling TL 5.8 billion in portfolio size.

Of the 87,194 new investors who came to the stock exchange in 2018, 29,171, meaning 33 percent, consisted of investors under the age of 35, while 58,023 investors were people over the age of 35.

Kilis, Hakkari and Şanlıurfa led the way in the cities with the highest number of domestic individual investors in 2018, while a lowest increase was observed in Karabük, Uşak and Kırklareli. As of the end of 2018, the number of investors rose to 830 in Kilis, 154 in Hakkari and 3,928 in Şanlıurfa.

The number of investors in Istanbul, which has almost half of the total portfolio size among the domestic investors in the stock market, increased by 20,436 people to 345,313, followed by Ankara with 132,408 people.

Analysts recalled that the relatively popular primary public offerings, such as Enerjisa, Trabzon Port and MLP Health Services, and the secondary public offering of an industrial giant such as ASELSAN were carried out in 2018, adding that more than 30,000 people opened accounts for the first time in the stock market with these public offerings and that the increase in the number of investors is mostly observed in the periods when the public supply market is mobile.

Analysts stated that the limited number of long-term investors in the stock exchange can be understood by looking at the investor profiles and shares, noting that there are mostly individual investors aiming for short-term gains with small portfolios.

They further argued that companies' dividend habits were not sufficient, which was the most important factor in the inability to develop a long-term investment culture, suggesting that the dividend yield should be increased especially in publicly traded companies.