Despite all the uncertainty and a lot of turbulence, the past year has been quite profitable on the stock exchange.

The Dax, for example, has gained 15.7 percent in value.

In addition, the German selection index reached a record high of 16,290 points in November.

With 14,164 points recently, the Dax is currently more than 2000 points or around 13 percent below it.

The American Dow Jones had increased even more significantly with a plus of almost 20 percent in the previous year.

Kerstin Papon

Editor in Business.

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But have German private investors also benefited from this?

A look at the customer accounts of the direct bank ING Germany at least suggests this.

Among other things, it shows that German private investors continued to rely on securities in the previous year, despite the ongoing pandemic, and invested considerable sums in the financial markets.

Depots got bigger

For the analysis, which is exclusively available to the FAZ, the development of around one million anonymous customer portfolios from the end of December 2020 to the end of December 2021 was examined.

According to an institute spokesman, this is almost half of the company's total of over two million depots.

Another result: Although women invested less on average in net terms, they generated higher returns than men.

Accordingly, the custody account volumes increased on average last year from EUR 50,600 to EUR 68,500.

The difference is mainly explained by the net purchase volume of securities, which averaged 8000 euros, and the return on investments.

With an average of EUR 8,600, male customers invested significantly more than female account holders, who invested around EUR 5,500 net.

However, women have achieved slightly higher returns from their portfolios than men: an average of 22.5 percent compared to 21 percent.

This trend was also evident in the last such analysis by ING 2019 (beginning of the year to the end of November) of a good 800,000 custody accounts.

At that time, the female gender even had an increase of 24.1 percent in contrast to male customers with 23.5 percent.

There are also differences in terms of asset classes.

In the customer portfolios of ING Germany as a whole, equities predominated in 2021 with an average share of 58 percent.

With an average portfolio share of 61 percent, men rely more on equities than women with 54 percent.

In the case of the actively managed funds, it was the other way around: male customers accounted for 12 percent of the portfolio and female customers for 18 percent.

While the stock values ​​were relatively similar in 2019, the fund shares were weighted significantly higher at 18 percent for men and 25 percent for women.

A spokeswoman for the bank points to the growing popularity and importance of exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Their share in the depots is similarly high for both customer groups:

The analysis also shows regional differences: custody account holders in southern Germany tended to achieve slightly higher returns than those in the northern or eastern federal states.

Investors from Baden-Württemberg, for example, were particularly successful with an average return of plus 22.1 percent.

Across all customer groups, the average return in the previous year was 21.4 percent - 5.7 percentage points more than the development of the Dax in this period.

It is noteworthy that the majority of customers have achieved a significantly better performance with their selection of securities than the German stock index, says Thomas Dwornitzak, investment expert at ING Germany.

This shows that even those who make their own decisions can invest successfully in securities.