Kiwi investors sold Apple stock before Christmas, but it's still a crowd favourite.
Kiwi investors sold Apple stock before Christmas, but it's still a crowd favourite.
Retail investors using Sharesies increasingly sold out of hyped-up US technology stocks Apple, Meta, Nvidia and Palantir before Christmas, but are generally investing more of their income in stock picking.
About $27 million worth of those stocks were sold on the app in the last three months of last year,Sharesies data showed, while just under $22m were buys for the period.
In the previous quarter, buy orders for those stocks outstripped selling.
“We saw a trend this quarter towards selling in high-profile stocks like NVIDIA, Apple Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Palantir Technologies, as some investors took the gains resulting from the market rebound,” Sharesies co-chief executive Brooke Roberts said.
Despite the uptick in profit taking, Apple was the third most popular stock to own on the online trading app in the last quarter of 2023. behind the top stocks Air New Zealand and Tesla, and ahead of Auckland International Airport and Mainfreight.
Sharesies trading data for the period showed Tourism Holdings jumped in popularity, as did Fonterra, Microsoft and Vanguard’s Australian Shares Index ETF.
Meanwhile, Meta, Ryman Healthcare, Contact Energy and Smartpay Holdings all slipped in the most-owned ranks.
Air New Zealand was the most popular stock on trading app Sharesies in the last quarter of 2023. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Despite a boom in fund offerings to investors, like exchange traded funds (ETFs), Sharesies customers preferred individual stock picking, as 78 per cent of all trades were placed into companies by Christmas.
The month of December marked a record trading month for Sharesies, its spokeswoman said in an emailed presentation of the data.
It closed the year with close to $3 billion in funds.
Across the quarter, stock purchases outweighed the scale of selling, with its buy to sell ratio averaging 1.39 across the quarter, compared with 1.15 and 1.05 in the previous quarters.
The net deposit ratio - how much money investors were investing via the app versus withdrawing - finished the year at 2.08, its highest level since August.
Despite the suggestive measures of confidence, investor behaviour still sat between a cautious and concerned level according to the Sharesies index.
Wellington-based online trading app Sharesies has more than 500,000 customers - most of them prefer to buy individual stocks over funds. Photo / File
Its data revealed increased profit taking out of US markets, with US-listed companies making up 70 per cent of all trades executed.
However, US stocks still accounted for 31 per cent of holdings across Sharesies’ more than 500,000 customer portfolios.
About 28 per cent of customer holdings were invested in funds.
The most popular funds to own on the app in the quarter were Smartshares’ US 500 Fund ETF, Pathfinder’s Global Responsibility Fund, Smartshares’ NZ Top 50 Fund ETF, Vanguard’s 500 Index fund ETF and Pathfinder Global Water Fund.
Sharesies’ data did not include its KiwiSaver customers.
Madison Reidy is the host of the NZ Herald’s investment show Markets with Madison. She joined the Herald in 2022 after working in investment, and has covered business and economics for television and radio broadcasters.
