Broadridge Investor Pulse Now an Interactive Tool Enabling Public Access to Analyze Investment Behavior of Nearly 50 Million U.S. Retail Investors

• New personal rate of return metric added, shows main street investors' return for 2024 at 13.5% vs 25% for S&P 500 and 1.3% for Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index
• Investor Pulse highlights investors are blending professional advice with rising DIY strategies, but advice driven investors had double the investment assets of their self-directed peers
• Broadridge unlocks unprecedented transparency into main street investment behavior; makes definitive source of U.S. retail investment behavior publicly available

NEW YORK, March 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) has released its latest Investor Pulse update via its new interactive, publicly available tool, providing critical insight into U.S. individual investor habits to enable asset managers, advisors, policy professionals and investors to deepen their understanding of the national investment landscape. A new feature of Broadridge's Investor Pulse includes the addition of the first-of-its-kind large scale analysis of individual investor rates of return.

Broadridge's Investor Pulse analyzes the taxable and IRA accounts of nearly 50 million U.S. investors and is the definitive source of U.S. retail investment behavior. Its newly created Investor Pulse site, updated monthly, is a dynamic tool for financial professionals and individual investors that unlocks the ability to access and analyze critical trends shaping the investment marketplace.

"Broadridge is committed to helping democratize and digitize investing and the interactive Investor Pulse site, coupled with the introduction of personal rates of return, provides an unprecedented level of detail and accessibility, empowering financial professionals with the most comprehensive and actionable insights into investment behavior," said Dan Cwenar, Head of Broadridge Data and Analytics. "These advancements not only help professionals and individual investors make more informed decisions but also allow them to refine their strategies with a deeper understanding of the evolving financial landscape. We are excited to continue leading the way in providing the most granular and valuable investor data available."

Demographic filtering by region, age, gender, education level, and more empowers users to delve deeper into investor subsegments with unprecedented precision and create custom peer groups on the fly. This new functionality enables advisors and investors to examine and benchmark against a highly specific cohort.

Innovative Personal Rate of Return Data Enlightens Segmentation

The newest element of Broadridge Investor Pulse is a personal rate of return metric that measures investors' asset-weighted total return based off month end positions and provides an indicator of investment gains and losses by segment. Having detailed data about investment rates of return broken down by segments such as age, gender, education level and region is valuable for financial professionals as it enables them to enhance personalization, optimize investment strategies, improve client satisfaction, and ensure more effective decision-making. Highlights of investor rate of return data in Q4 2024 include: 

• U.S. retail investors experienced positive personal rates of return in Q4 2024:
  • There was a .7% median rate of return for all retail investors compared to 2.4% for the S&P 500 index and -3.1% for the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index.
• Returns among wealth and generational segments were primarily driven by increased equity exposure, specifically the combination of equity-oriented mutual funds and ETFs as well as directly held equities or stocks.
• "Active mutual fund owners" underperformed all other investors as less than 10% of their portfolios included individual stocks. Active mutual fund owners are investors with 50% or more of their asset holdings in active mutual funds.
• Educational level had no impact on rates of return. Investors with high school, college and grad school all returned .7%.
• Male investors, driven by their higher allocation to equities, achieved higher personal rates of return versus females at 1.0% and .4% respectively. 

2024 Investor Pulse Key Findings

Based on actual holdings of more than 48 million investors, Broadridge's latest edition of Investor Pulse for calendar year 2024 gleaned these key observations.

The Continued Rise of DIY Investing

In 2024, asset share by DIY investors increased across each generation. Overall, 24.1% of all assets were invested via self-directed platforms. Though advisory channels retain the lion's share of investors' assets, there has been a steady shift from advice to online brokerage channels across all wealth tiers.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, younger generations such as Gen-Z (0.8%), Millennial (9%), and Gen-X (28%) make up a higher relative asset share of the online brokerage channel as compared to advice channels, while Boomers and Silent Generation investors comprise a larger relative share within advice channels.

While the popularity of DIY investing has increased markedly nationwide, Midwest investors are notably the least reliant on a DIY approach with 19.4% of their assets invested via online brokerage platforms compared to 23%-26% for other regions.

Male & Female Investors Diverge in Advice, Product Channels and Personal Rates of Return

While men make up a higher proportion of assets in both advice channels and the online brokerage channel, it is within the latter that the disparity is greatest. Men have 54% asset share among advice channels and an even higher 61% share among DIY-ers with little shifts since 2019.

For mutual funds, ETFs and equities/stocks, men hold a greater share of the assets, with the largest spread for equities/stocks at nearly 15 percentage points more than women investors.

Study Methodology

To create this study, Broadridge analyzed de-identified share ownership data derived from Broadridge's proprietary business processes consisting of tens of millions of retail investor households' taxable and IRA accounts and billions of data points to achieve a unique level of insight into holdings invested through financial intermediaries (broker-dealers, online, RIAs, wirehouses). Broadridge analyzed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), closed-end funds, open-end mutual funds and U.S. equities held in taxable accounts and IRAs for the years ending, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

About Broadridge

Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR) is a global technology leader with the trusted expertise and transformative technology to help clients and the financial services industry operate, innovate, and grow. We power investing, governance, and communications for our clients – driving operational resiliency, elevating business performance, and transforming investor experiences. 

Our technology and operations platforms process and generate over 7 billion communications per year and underpin the daily trading of more than $10 trillion of securities globally. A certified Great Place to Work^®, Broadridge is part of the S&P 500^® Index, employing over 14,000 associates in 21 countries.

For more information about us, please visit www.broadridge.com.

Media contact:
Caroline Wolf
Prosek Partners
[email protected]

SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.