Adam Smith

For Australian investors, this past year’s returns in global equities have been much higher than even their wildest hopes as the S&P 500 surged 29 per cent in US dollar terms, marking its best year since 2013.

Looking back at a very positive year for investors, Saxo Markets announces the most traded individual stocks and ETFs among its Australian clients in 2019 as well as the most popular current holdings.

Adam Smith, Saxo Markets Australia CEO, said: “Even though 2019 was characterised by high geopolitical uncertainty around the US-China trade war and Brexit, this did not drag on the long-term performance of global markets. Many who exercised patience between tweets and headlines throughout the year were very well rewarded.”

Most traded securities among Saxo clients in Australia in 2019

* By number of trades

The most-traded ETFs among Saxo clients were broad-based ETFs. Most of these securities were ETFs with overseas exposures with the exception of the most traded ETF – the Vanguard Australian Shares Index ETF (ASX: VAS). 

Top current holdings among Saxo clients in Australia*

* By number of clients with open positions in Jan 2020

Currently, the top five individual stocks holdings of Saxo’s Australian clients are all international tech companies, and none are listed in the local exchange. Globally, some of these individual stocks were also among the most traded ones in Saxo Bank clients during 2019.

“Interestingly our Australian clients no longer seem to have a local bias when it comes to long-term stock holdings as they can see the opportunities that abound in international equity markets, particularly the US,” said Mr Smith. “However, interest in local names does remain strong with ASX listed stocks becoming more actively traded,” he added.

“What’s happening with ETFs is a little different. There’s a bit of cross-over between the most traded ETFs and the most popular long-term holdings because there’s just a lot of buying in this space. Australian investors have been bulking up their portfolios with broad-based ETFs, a trend that is likely to continue for many years still.”

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Doug Morris & Adam Smith

Saxo Markets, the multi-asset trading and investing specialist, and Sharesight, a portfolio tracking and tax reporting service provider, have announced a new partnership to deliver an integrated recordkeeping service for self-directed investors.

The Open Banking-like initiative, integrated through an open API, will allow Saxo clients in Australia to create share trading summary reports with one click.

Through the joint solution, investors will be able to easily obtain personalised reports for both performance tracking and tax reporting purposes, including capital gains tax reports and dividend income reports, as well as benchmarking insights to track against the market.

Saxo Markets CEO, Adam Smith said: “Our integration with Sharesight is a natural fit as both of our companies are committed to providing self-directed investors with tools that are often only available to professional investors.”

“This integration also makes tax reporting easier for our clients, providing a seamless solution to reduce the ongoing burden of tax administration.”

Conversely, the integration with Saxo will expose Sharesight clients to a platform provider offering access to 36 international exchanges and over 40,000 instruments across all asset classes.

Sharesight CEO, Doug Morris, said: “Sharesight clients have tended to have a high portfolio weighting to Aussie shares and are not that exposed to global investing opportunities. Given this local bias, we see our alliance with a Saxo as highly beneficial for our clients.”

An investor trading with Saxo will be able to grant their accountant access to trading records via their Sharesight account thereby streamlining much of the manual work that goes into tax reporting.

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