Top 20 trades on the NZX 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 New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) in 2019 and calculate how they performed during the year.

Let’s dive into 2019’s top 20 trades.

Top 20 New Zealand Stock Exchange trades in 2019

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The Sharesight20 top 20 trades for the NZX in 2019 shows the dominance of the NZX owned Smartshares range of ETFs as a favoured investment vehicle among Sharesight users to gain exposure to a range of asset classes and international opportunities. Of the top 20, Smartshares ETFs make up 5 of the top 6 most traded stocks on the exchange, we also see a significant bias towards buy trades in these ETFs from investors "topping up" the amount invested with regular contributions and taking advantage of dollar cost averaging.

Top 20 NZX 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.

New Zealand Electricity generator and retailer Meridian Energy Limited (NZX: MEL) was the standout performer in 2019 with returns of 54.94% including a healthy dividend yield of 7.88%. Topping Meridian in dividend returns however was fuel retailer and distributor Z Energy Limited (NZX: ZEL) with dividends yielding 11.89% - a return that softened the blow of the 19.85% collapse in the stock’s price during the year.

Overall an equally weighted portfolio of these 20 stocks would have returned 23.89%, which would have been outperformed by an ETF tracking the NZX Top 50, such as the Smartshares NZ top 50 ETF (NZX: FNZ) which returned 29.05%.

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• 7 reasons why Sharesight is better than a spreadsheet

• Every new feature + improvement Sharesight released in 2019