Trading volumes on wealth platform Sharesies hit close to $3 billion in the March quarter despite investors starting to adopt a cautious mindset in the face of global market turmoil.
The wealth platform released its latest quarterly index report on Tuesday, showing investor confidence on the platform slumped towards the end of the March quarter.
Sharesies said this change mirrored broader market sentiment as US markets were dragged lower over tariff concerns, with weakened US consumer sentiment, inflationary pressures and increased tech stock volatility also on the minds of investors.
The wealth platform reported its trading volumes came to $2.89 billion in the March quarter. This is lower – but not by much – than the record $3.21 billion trading volume that occurred during the previous quarter.
The March 2025 quarter is now Sharesies’ second-highest trading quarter on record. Overall funds deposited into Sharesies during the month of March also reached a historic monthly high, coming to a total of $198 million.
Funds deposited in March did include a “record” $37 million in shares that were transferred into Sharesies during the month that were linked to investors being able to earn Air New Zealand Airpoints on deposits and share transfers for the first time.
Sharesies’ quarterly index reports gauge the sentiments of retail investors in New Zealand and Australia around wealth and investing trends.
It does this by aggregating anonymised data from over 750,000 Sharesies users and ranks confidence levels on a scale of 0 to 100, based on various metrics like buying/selling ratios and investment preferences.
During the March quarter, the investor mood on Sharesies fell by 16 points compared to the December 2024 quarter. Investor sentiment trended upwards during the December quarter following the US election and after the Official Cash Rate (OCR) started its downward descent.
March’s drop of 16 points pushed Sharesies’ confidence index to 39 out of 100 from the ‘balanced’ to ‘cautious’ investor confidence category as global markets braced themselves for Trump’s tariffs.
Sharesies founder and co-CEO Sonya Williams told interest.co.nz the switch to cautious investor mode was aligned with market sentiment in March as investors braced for US President Donald Trump’s global tariff plans announced last week.
“Which I think is what you would expect with the volatility that was going on out there,” she said.
Williams said while there was still uncertainty in the market, people were still continuing to invest and the platform had experienced more buying than selling during the March quarter.
“What we did see was people looking to change the diversification of their portfolio,” she said.
“So we saw people moving from, say, individual companies into more exchange-traded funds and managed funds, more so than we had in the past.”
The wealth management platform reported this led to a “substantial drop” in the percentage invested in individual companies on Sharesies to 52% from 74%.
Williams said this showed people were still continuing to take a long-term investment view and “bracing” themselves for volatility.
When it came to individual stocks, Air New Zealand, NVIDA, Apple, Tesla and Rocket Lab were the five most owned investments on Sharesies during the March quarter. Tesla’s declining share price dropped the stock to fourth place on Sharesies' most owned list.
Sharesies' net buy/sell ratio for the March quarter averaged 1.19. The platform’s net buy/sell ratio measures the gap between total buying and selling activity. A ratio above one signals buying surpasses selling, suggesting confidence among investors.
The report said investor willingness to hold despite the market volatility was demonstrated even during the US market’s sharp decline in the quarter’s final two weeks.
Sharesies net deposit ratio – which measures the flow of funds into and out of Sharesies’ invest and save products – was up from the previous quarter and averaged 1.6 in the March quarter.
Sharesies manages over $3.5 billion in funds and has over 785,000 users across NZ and Australia. The platform offers investing in shares, savings accounts, KiwiSaver and car insurance. The Sharesies platform now has more than $8 billion funds under management.
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