The growing army of retail investors signed up to the Sharesies platform kept their nerve through the wild June quarter, when US President Donald Trump’s tariff interventions sent markets into a tailspin before they soared out again.
What’s more, the re-emergence of initial public offerings in New York attracted a subset of the platform’s 800,000 users, especially in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence, drones and defence tech, crypto and robotics, according to Sharesies co-chief executive Sonya Williams.
In the 12 months ended June 30, there were 166 new listings in the US, up 77% on the prior period, with the June debut of stablecoin issuer Circle Internet underlining the return of the IPO in no uncertain terms when it surged 168% in its first day on the New York Stock Exchange.
At the same time, the investment platform’s user base directed more money into exchange-traded funds rather than companies through the June quarter, with an average 64% invested in companies through the period.
“There’s a growing proportion of investors with trading volumes going into those new listings and people shifting into ETFs, where they’re seeing growth and opportunities in emerging sectors,” Williams said. “They want resilience, and they want to ride out uncertainty, but they’re also investing into things as well.”
Trading places
Australia’s ASX has similarly started returning to life, with the IPOs of Virgin Australia and GemLife in recent weeks, while the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is another bourse that’s seen a resurgence in new listings.
New Zealand’s NZX has yet to see any new additions so far this year, although the government has recently loosened the regulatory burden to tap retail investors for money, and has several workstreams in place to remove other blockages to new listings.
Sharesies’ Williams said the two trends of sticking with long-term investments through an incredibly volatile period while also investing in new listings showed a growing maturity among retail investors in being able to manage more than one strategy across their portfolio.
“People are building diversified portfolios and seeing new opportunities,” Williams said. “That’s a really interesting thing among retail investors and how they’re behaving.”
Internationally, retail investors have been more willing to throw their weight behind Wall Street in recent months, with institutional houses looking further afield and shying away from US stocks, saying their valuations look stretched relative to their European peers.
New Zealand’s S&P/NZX 50 index gained 2.7% in the June quarter, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index climbed 8.9% and Wall Street’s S&P 500 jumped almost 11%.
Coming to America
The US market remains a favourite for Sharesies users – who have more than $8 billion of assets on the platform – with Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and Rocket Lab four of the top five most-held companies, while the NZX-listed Smart US 500 ETF is the most held security overall. The Vanguard 500 index fund ETF is the third-most owned fund or ETF on the platform, and the sixth-most held security overall.
Sharesies said chipmaker Nvidia’s popularity continued to grow in the June quarter, with a 5% increase in the number of investors owning it since March, while the total holdings of Rocket Lab jumped 79% due in part to the share price doubling through the quarter.
More broadly, the Sharesies index showed investor sentiment remained balanced in the June quarter ending the period at 44, on a scale of 100, nudging up from the 39 reading where it ended the March period.
And Sharesies users remained net buyers in the quarter at an average ratio of 1.19, with a net deposit ratio of 2.03 for the period, which included a record monthly inflow of $208 million in April.
Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Christian Lendl on Unsplash.
This story has been updated to fix a typo and correct the June quarter final reading.
