The third quarter of 2025 saw Dutch households’ portfolio investments surpass €200 billion for the first time, as revealed by the latest DNB figures. The growth can mainly be ascribed to rising stock prices. Tech stocks in particular rose sharply in value, with ASML overtaking Shell as the share in which Dutch households invest the most.
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Total investments by Dutch households rose to €204.7 billion in the third quarter of 2025, up €9.0 billion from the previous quarter. Households mainly benefited from rising stock prices, whereas the effects from net purchases (+€433 million) and exchange rates (-€157 million) were limited.
Households mostly invest in investment funds: the value of investment fund holdings rose from €123.0 billion at the end of the second quarter to €128.5 billion (+4.5%) three months later. Investments in listed equities rose 5.4% in value in the third quarter to €69.4 billion. Bond holdings were worth €6.7 billion at the end of the third quarter.
At De Nederlandsche Bank, we independently compile statistics on the Dutch financial sector and economy. This article is based on these statistics. More information on our statistics and all dashboards can be found on our Statistics homepage.
Dutch households benefited significantly from shareholdings in chipmaker ASML: the value of a share rose 22% in the third quarter, meaning households owned €4.4 billion worth of the tech company’s shares at the end of September. This, coupled with net disposals of €188 million, placed households’ total shareholdings in ASML 16.6% higher than a quarter earlier.
This now also makes ASML the leader for investments by households. For a long time, Shell topped the list of most popular individual listed shares among Dutch households, but the value of investments in the oil and gas giant has been declining for some time.
This is partly because households have sold about €1.6 billion worth of Shell shares (net) in the last three years. And although Shell’s share price rose during this period, the AEX average outpaced it.
Since DNB has been tracking these figures (December 2018), ASML is only the third company to top the list of investments of Dutch households. Rabobank, whose Member Certificates are considered listed shares under statistical guidelines, was also previously the most popular.
Incidentally, ASML is not the only tech company whose value in the portfolios of Dutch households rose sharply last quarter. The value of portfolio investments in Dutch technology investor Prosus and major US tech companies Apple, NVIDIA, Alphabet and Tesla also grew by about 16.0%.
The total securities holdings of Dutch households consisted of listed shares, investment fund positions and bonds totalling €204.7 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2025. By comparison, Dutch households keep far more funds in savings accounts with Dutch banks (€518.4 billion) than in investment portfolios. They also hold €108.3 billion in payment accounts with Dutch banks. Added to this are substantial assets kept with pension funds and insurers, business assets of self-employed persons and home equity, which fall outside direct securities holdings.
According to figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), there are 8.4 million private households in the Netherlands. Of these, around a quarter (2.2 million) invest, according to the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM).
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