A rapidly increasing number of individual investors and changing priorities among there institutional counterparts has led to changes in the investor structure of the domestic fund market, the Shanghai Morning Post reported. By the end of 2006, domestic stock exchanges were playing home to more than 15 million individual investors,. Data from TX Investment Consulting, a domestic financial services consultancy, shows individual investors controlled 74.21% of the open-end fund market at the end of 2006, up 21.23% year-on-year. Mixed funds and stock-linked open-end funds were even more popular with individual investors according to figures from Wind Info, a leading mainland financial data provider. Individual investors held 81.38% of stock-linked open-end funds by the end of 2006, double the 41.1% they controlled mid-year, while institutional investors sharply reduced their involvement to 18.62%.  Meanwhile, institutional investors increased their share of close-end funds from 57.09% mid-year to 61.87% by year’s end. Industry analysts said institutional investors were shifting to  close-end funds because soon-to-be-launched index-based options would allow investors to hedge close-end but not open-end funds.