Fortescue Ltd (ASX: FMG) shares top the list of the most traded stocks among baby boomer investors using the Selfwealth trading platform in FY24.
Selfwealth Ltd (ASX: SWF) has released a trading data report for the 2024 financial year.
It highlights several interesting investment trends that distinguish the baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — from other generations.
Let's take a look.
Baby boomers love ASX 200 shares
Baby boomers using the Selfwealth platform showed a strong preference for individual S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) shares.
Their 10 favourite stocks were predominantly larger, older, and well-established blue-chip individual ASX 200 shares that pay dividends, led by Fortescue shares and BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP).
There were no exchange-traded funds (ETFs) among the boomers' 10 favourite ASX stocks.
This is significant given ETFs feature prominently among the most traded stocks of all other generations represented in the data.
Interestingly, baby boomers are no fans of US shares or other international shares.
Despite all the hype over the Magnificent Seven in FY24, baby boomers largely shunned those mega US stocks.
In fact, only two US shares were featured in the top 100 most traded stocks among baby boomers in FY24 (perhaps unfortunate given the S&P 500 Index (SP: .INX) rose at triple the pace of the ASX 200 in FY24).
Those two US stocks were electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) in 46th place and graphics processing units (GPU) developer NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) in 99th position.
The data also reveals another interesting trend. Baby boomers showed a greater inclination to actively trade their 10 favourite ASX 200 stocks.
According to Selfwealth, this indicates less conviction in their long-term outlook on these ASX 200 shares.
According to the report:
The buy-to-sell ratio across the top ten trades was 54.4%, which was approximately 20 to 25 percentage points lower than other groups.
For example, 51.9% of trades in Fortescue shares were buy transactions and 48.1% were sell orders.
It's worth noting that Fortescue shares smashed a new all-time high during FY24. The Fortescue share price hit $29.95 on 2 February, which may have inspired some profit-taking selling.
Fortescue shares the No. 1 favourite of baby boomers
Here are the top 10 most traded ASX 200 shares by volume (thus incorporating both buy and sell orders) among baby boomer investors in FY24, according to Selfwealth.
We have also included the percentage of buy orders next to each ASX share.
| Rank | Top ASX 200 shares by trading volume | Percentage of buy orders |
| 1 | Fortescue Ltd (ASX: FMG) | 51.9% |
| 2 | BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) | 58.4% |
| 3 | Pilbara Minerals Ltd (ASX: PLS) | 55.8% |
| 4 | Woodside Energy Group Ltd (ASX: WDS) | 61.2% |
| 5 | Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG) | 51.8% |
| 6 | Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) | 50.3% |
| 7 | ANZ Group Holdings Ltd (ASX: ANZ) | 50.3% |
| 8 | Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) | 45.5% |
| 9 | CSL Ltd (ASX: CSL) | 58.1% |
| 10 | Telstra Group Ltd (ASX: TLS) | 59.7% |
The baby boomer generation is the only one trading Fortescue shares more frequently than BHP and Pilbara Minerals, according to the data.
BHP and Pilbara Minerals shares were the two most traded ASX mining stocks among the other generations of investors in FY24.
