Top 20 trades on the ASX in 2019 - Sharesight20

Disclaimer: The below article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a product recommendation, or taxation or financial advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please check with your financial adviser or accountant to obtain the correct advice for your situation.

In this Sharesight20 yearly trading snapshot we look at the 20 most traded stocks by Sharesight users on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in 2019 and how these stocks performed during the year.

Let’s dive into 2019’s top 20 trades.

Sharesight20 top 20 ASX trades in 2019

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Investors using Sharesight overwhelmingly bought the Vanguard Australian Shares Index ETF (ASX: VAS) that seeks to track the S&P/ASX 300 index. Following closely behind in the total number of trades was Buy Now, Pay Later growth stock Afterpay Limited (ASX: APT). In a similar result to our snapshot of the top 20 trades on the NZX in 2019 - 5 of the 20 were exchange-traded funds.

Top 20 ASX trades in 2019 - performance

To calculate the performance of these stocks during 2019 we built a Sharesight portfolio domiciled in the same country as the exchange (to remove the impact of currency fluctuations) that contained these 20 stocks and invested an equally weighted (5% of the total portfolio) amount in each stock on January 1st 2019 (or the first listed date for stocks that listed after that date).

We then ran Sharesight’s Performance Report to calculate the portfolio’s 2019 performance. Here’s the results, ordered by Total Return.

The significant number of Sharesight users who already hold Afterpay Limited (ASX: APT) will probably not be surprised to see it was the top performer in 2019 - delivering a stellar 136.32% return over the year.

With dividend income a focus for many Australian investors, particularly those running SMSFs, it’s perhaps not a surprise that more than half of these 20 most traded ASX stocks delivered dividend returns greater than 5% in 2019. BHP Group Limited (ASX: BHP) and Wesfarmers Limited (ASX: WES) were particular standouts here, paying dividends returning 13.94% and 12.31% respectively.

Overall an equally weighted portfolio of these 20 stocks would have returned 37.89%, which would have quite significantly outperformed an ETF tracking the ASX 300 index like Vanguard’s (ASX: VAS) which returned 24.50%, but would have been slightly outperformed by Betashares Nasdaq 100 tracking ETF (ASX: NDQ) which returned 39.34%.

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FURTHER READING

• 3 reasons why you need to be tracking dividends

• 7 reasons why Sharesight is better than a spreadsheet

• Every new feature + improvement Sharesight released in 2019