Hype around the Magnificent Seven and the recent outperformance of US shares over the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) has prompted many Australians to broaden their investment horizons and buy US stocks or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking US indices.
This has been a successful strategy.
In 2024, the S&P 500 Index (SP: INX) rose by 23.31% and delivered total returns (including dividends) of 25.02%.
The ASX 200 delivered a healthy but inferior total gross return of 11.44%.
So, it's not surprising that many Aussie investors who have been proactively buying the dip of late have targeted US shares.
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Top 10 most traded US shares
New data from online trading platform Stake provides insights into exactly which US shares are on investors' radars most.
The following table shows the 10 most traded US shares on the Stake platform on Monday, 7 April.
That was when we saw the biggest market dip on the ASX last week, with the ASX 200 falling 4.23%.
That was preceded by one of the biggest falls on the US stock market since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
On Friday, 4 April, the S&P 500 fell 5.97%.
| Rank | US share | Buy % |
| 1 | NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) | 82 |
| 2 | Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) | 69 |
| 3 | Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: VOO) | 91 |
| 4 | Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) | 83 |
| 5 | Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) | 78 |
| 6 | Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) | 83 |
| 7 | SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA: SPY) | 87 |
| 8 | Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: PLTR) | 70 |
| 9 | Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META) | 64 |
| 20 | Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) | 74 |
Largest volume of US stock trades in more than a year
Stake's markets analyst, Samy Sriram, said the volume of total trades of US shares on the Stake Wall St platform was the largest in more than a year on Monday.
Sriram commented:
A large cohort of retail investors saw an opportunity to 'buy the dip,' with the magnificent seven cohort and US index tracking ETFs like VOO seeing significant trading volume.
Sriram said Apple stock saw "the most meaningful increase in buy orders" among Australian investors on Monday.
That may have been because Apple shares were crushed during the US trading sessions on 3 April and 4 April, dropping by 15.86%.
As the table shows, the top 10 US shares traded on Monday had a heavy leaning to the buy side.
This indicates more investors were proactively buying the dip.
However, Sriram noted that sell orders on Tesla shares on Monday were higher than average at 30% of its trades.
This may indicate that some longer-term Tesla investors decided to take their capital gains and run after a difficult period for the stock.
Tesla shares are down 37.5% in the year to date.
Many investors have felt concerned that Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is too distracted by his new role with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and this may become detrimental to his EV company.
Interested in ASX shares?
Find out the 10 most popular ASX stocks that Aussie investors are targeting during this market volatility.
