Dutch households sold off billions in investments in last quarter of 2023

Dutch households sold off their shares and investments on a large scale at the end of last year. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Netherlands residents sold no less than 4.7 billion euros in investments - a new record, AD reports based on figures from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB).

In the last quarter of last year, Netherlands residents sold 2.4 billion euros worth of positions in investment funds, 2 billion euros worth of listed shares, and 0.3 billion euros of bonds.

According to the central bank, it is hard to pinpoint the exact cause for this spike in sales. “We see this remarkable development in the last quarter of last year, but we do not yet know why households sold so many investments,” Martin Boermans, a senior policy officer at the DNB, told the newspaper.

He speculated that households may have wanted to cash in on returns and make a profit with increased stock prices in December. They also may have faced extra expenses that month. “Or perhaps they wanted to pay off their mortgage before the end of the year,” Boermans said. “But we can’t look into people’s minds, so it remains speculation.”

Despite the large number of sales, the value of Dutch households’ total investment portfolio increased to 166 billion euros in the last quarter of 2023. Investors achieved a return of 8 billion euros due to higher stock prices.

The previous record dates from the euro crisis. In the last quarter of 2011, Dutch households sold 2.8 billion euros in investments. DNB started tracking these figures in 2009.