Report says one third of foreign stocks on the stock market are in the hands of Americans

According to Turkish Capital Market Union (TSPB) data, as of the end of 2016, there are 9,485 foreign investors in Istanbul Stock Exchange with stocks of TL 156.5 billion. Foreigners are only a small minority in terms of number of investors. The share of foreigners according to the number of investors is only 0.9 percent. However, given the size of the portfolio, the share of foreigners goes upto 63 percent.

Based on said report, nearly one-third of the foreign portfolio which was 156.5 billion Turkish Liras at the end of 2016 is in the hands of US investors. A total of 244 investors from the US have stocks of 48.5 billion liras.

The United States is followed by UK with shares of 24.1 billion liras and 15.4 percent share and Luxembourg with 12.4 billion shares of stock and 7.9 percent share.  When the shares of these three countries are added the total foreign investment turns out to be 54.3 percent.

The Association of Capital Market Markets of Turkey classifies investors with portfolio in Turkey on country basis, segregating top ten countries in a separate group. Based on this ranking we see that the share of the top ten countries is 79 percent, while the share of other countries totals up to 21 percent, only. On the other hand it is worth noting that only Qatar from among all the Middle East countries, has a place on the list for top ten.