Big wins in Sharesies’ record day
Sharesies had its biggest day last Monday, with its members trading about $36 million worth of stock.
Co-founder Leighton Roberts said that was about $3m higher than its previous record, set in late 2021 just before interest rates headed north, laying markets low around the world as investors battened down.
Trading fell as low as about $15m per day as rates were repeatedly hiked and markets were laid low around the world during 2022 and into early 2023.
“It definitely looks like trading volumes are back,” Roberts said. “January and February set records and March is looking strong.”
He framed it, in part, as an indicator that rate cuts were on the way — just as the 2021 fall proved an early signal that rates would rise.
It also reflected a — related — surge of interest in United States tech stocks, notably Nvidia, the maker of chips used in AI training and one of the world’s most valuable companies, over the past couple of months.
Some 25,000 New Zealanders now hold Nvidia shares through Sharesies’ fractional ownership platform, which provides easy access to US-listed firms (albeit now with a larger clip of the ticket. A little over a year ago, Sharesies raised its brokerage fees by up to 1.9 per cent for trades up to $3000, from around 0.5 per cent on average).
That’s up about 80 per cent over this time last year, Roberts said.
“At the same time, we’ve seen a quite strong volume out of NZX blue chips like Meridian, a2 and Fletcher Building and moving back into growth stocks like Nvidia.”
Nvidia shares, expected to soon be the subject of a stock split, have risen 281 per cent over the past 12 months from US$240.63 to US$875.28.
Its bull run has benefited not just Sharesies’ members who bought in that right time but many KiwiSaver funds that hold the stock and the New Zealand Super Fund — whose 771,114 Nvidia shares were worth US$675m ($1.01 billion) at Friday’s close.
And over the past two months, about 1000 Sharesies investors have climbed into another, lower-profile chip-maker on the Nasdaq: Super Micro Computer, which last week was added to the S&P500 — providing another lift for its stock, which has risen from US$92.47 to US$1140.01 over the past year.
(For those who don’t want to pick individual firms, Sharesies — like its peers — offers various ETFs or exchange-tradeable funds, from baskets of shares and, more recently, cryptocurrency — a faster grower since Bitcoin ETFs finally got the greenlight in the US in the New Year).
About 20,000 Kiwis own Rocket Lab stock through Sharesies — about 10 per cent more than this time last year, Roberts said. The Kiwi-American firm’s Nasdaq-listed stock has been up and down and, at US$4.42, is still well below its US$10 listing price.
Much hinges on the much larger Neutron rocket which Rocket Lab is banking on, and its growing space services business, to get it into the black.
The high-profile New Zealandfounded, US-listed firm, Allbirds, currently has about 4000 Kiwi investors through Sharesies, which Roberts describes as a “slight decline over the last year”.
Its shares, which nearly doubled to US$29.80 on the day it listed two years ago, were recently trading at 87c. The firm will report its latest numbers on Wednesday.