Most weeks, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) CommSec brokering platform tells us the ASX and international shares (which usually just means US shares) that are the most popular with its Aussie customers.
CommSec is one of the largest online brokers in the country. As such, this data can be an insightful indicator of investment trends in the Aussie market.
We have already looked at the most popular ASX shares today, so here are the top 10 US shares CommSec customers were buying last week. This week's data covers 25-29 January.
Most traded US shares on the ASX
- GameStop Corp (NYSE: GME) – representing 8.5% of total trades with a 77%/23% buy-to-sell ratio.
- AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE: AMC) – representing 5% of total trades with a 79%/21% buy-to-sell ratio.
- Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) – representing 4.8% of total trades with a 70%/30% buy-to-sell ratio.
- BlackBerry Ltd (NYSE: BB) – representing 3% of total trades with a 78%/22% buy-to-sell ratio.
- Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) – representing 2.8% of total trades with a 71%/29% buy-to-sell ratio.
- Nio Inc (NYSE: NIO)
- Nokia Oyj (NYSE: NOK)
- Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE: PLTR)
- Naked Brand Group Ltd (NASDAQ: NAKD)
- Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT)
What can we learn from these trades?
Well, my oh my, what an interesting set of results for last week. The first thing to note is that the long-time regents of this list in electric car and battery manufacturers Tesla and Nio have been usurped for one of the first times in months. They have been replaced with (time to get the elephant out of the room) GameStop and AMC.
GameStop, as you might already know by now, has been the talk of the investing world over the past week or so. Fuelled by a WallStreetBets-orchestrated short-squeeze, GameStop stock rocketed more than 300% last week, sparking a hurricane of investor interest. You can read more about the whole saga here, but let's just say it was no surprise GameStop topped the list.
However, the GameStop situation has opened the floodgates to a raft of stocks that FOMO-riddled investors have also targeted.
AMC (a struggling cinema chain), BlackBerry (the struggling phone company) and Nokia (see previous company) all unexpectedly make the list this week as well, displacing old favourites like Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) and ARK Innovation ETF (NYSE: ARKK).
There is only one explanation for this – investors are drinking the WallStreetBets Kool-Aid and hoping for a repeat performance with these other 'sunset' companies. Despite this, investors evidently haven't entirely lost their appetite for US blue-chip shares like Apple and Microsoft. The more things change, the more they stay the same!