That small investors are idiots is a fundamental tenet of City professionals. The received wisdom is that the amateurs get sucked in when bull markets are nearing their peak and spat out again just as the bears are running out of puff. They are supposedly greedy when they should be fearful and fearful when they should be greedy. And they are obsessed with short-term news and diverted by every passing fad and piece of bid scuttlebutt.

Yet statistics from Capita Registrars paint a different picture. For a start, private investors are for the most part buy-and-hold investors, their holdings being fairly stable. When they do trade, their timing looks level-headed.

The cynics would have expected small punters to have panicked during the turmoil of the past two months. In fact the opposite is true: they were net buyers of £1 billion of extra shares in August and September. Earlier in the year, when markets were rising, they showed similar maturity, taking advantage of the strong conditions to crystallise modest profits.

Private investors aren’t so daft after all.

Having lauded the good sense of private investors in Britain, one has to wonder at the mania for share investment by the Chinese. PetroChina, the energy company, is to sell up to $10 billion of shares to locals in what promises to be a record domestic flotation next month. With the Shanghai market thundering higher, demand is likely to be strong. Another local float, Shenhua Energy, was oversubscribed 30 times last month. But in this case it may be more instructive to look at who’s leaving PetroChina by the back door - Warren Buffett clutching an estimated 600 per cent profit – than the hordes clamouring to get in at the front.

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