Families return to a stock market dominated by foreign investment

BarcelonaAfter starring in a certain withdrawal, families are once again entrusting their savings to the stock market. Last year, the weight of households in the Spanish stock market rose to 16.7%, the highest level in the last four years, according to Bolsas y Mercados (BME), the operator of the Spanish trading floors, a subsidiary of the Swiss firm Six. Its historical low occurred in 2024. Another relevant fact is that foreign investors accounted for a historical record of 50.4% of the total.

In any case, the proportion of individuals in the stock markets is still far from the 35.1% reached in 1998, in the midst of the privatization stage of public companies. These were the years of the sale of all public capital of companies such as Endesa or Telefónica, among others, led by the government of José María Aznar (PP), which culminated a process that had begun earlier with the executives of Felipe González (PSOE).

According to the financial survey of families, prepared by the Bank of Spain, 12.2% of households, about 2.4 million, directly hold listed shares. In the United States, this percentage is 21%. According to the survey, the average value of the direct portfolio of listed shares stood at the end of 2024 at 10,000 euros, with a decrease in real terms, that is, adjusted for inflation, of 27% from the maximum reached in 2014.

The report highlights that "the high presence of individual investors or families has historically been one of the differential features of the Spanish stock market" and that the levels reached in 2025, despite their growth, are still around half of what they were more than 30 years ago. The advance of nine tenths in 2025 compared to 2024 "is explained in part by an extraordinary stock market year, although the quantitative and qualitative leap necessary to recover the prominence observed at the end of the 1990s is not yet appreciated". In fact, according to the analysis, the 2025 advance "represents a significant improvement, but it does not yet allow us to speak of a structural change".

Another of the highlights is the weight of foreign investors, who are the main owners of companies on the Spanish stock exchange, with 50.4% of the total, an unprecedented proportion. In non-listed companies, the weight of foreign investors falls below half, at 24.6%. In the last 25 years, the foreign presence has grown remarkably on the Spanish stock exchange: it has gained 15.7 percentage points, going from 34.7% in 2000 to 50.4% in 2025.

Institutional investors

The presence of capital from other countries has coincided with the increase in the presence of large institutional investors. At the end of June, 9,226 private institutional funds held positions in Ibex companies, the main stock market benchmark, with a total value of 307.634 billion euros. Those from the United States accounted for 44.7% of the total, followed by those from the United Kingdom (26.11%) and France (7.42%). In any case, Europe as a whole accounted for 51%, North America for 45.62%, and the Pacific region for 2.24%.

According to the report, the evolution of the positions of international private funds during 2025 and the first half of 2026 "takes place in a context of greater attractiveness of European equity assets, and in particular Spanish ones, which had lagged behind in terms of profitability compared to previous years". The Spanish stock market, led by the Ibex, revalued by almost 50% last year. This international trend also occurs in a context of "expansion of passive investment and some diversification of portfolios with respect to the high previous concentration in the North American market".

The public administration maintained a weight of 4% in the Spanish stock market last year, the second highest proportion in the last 28 years, with an approximate value of about 45 billion, according to BME's analysis. Among the main positions, the stake of the public company SEPI in Indra, at 27.99%, and of the State in Telefónica, at 10%, stand out. Non-financial companies stood at 19.4%; investment funds, insurance companies, and other financial entities at 5.5%; and banks at 4.1%.