What Australians Have Been Buying and Selling in 2026

本站添加: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]This was bigger than people buying banks. It was bigger than crypto. It was on par with the entire allocation to just broad global equities. So, this was hot.

[00:00:08]>> That is people with a long-term time horizon and an unconstrained investment menu saying, "Give me all the leverage."

[00:00:15]>> Yeah.

[00:00:17]>> This episode is proudly brought to you by Beta Shares Direct. And given that we are part of the Beta Shares Group, we have been given access to the buying and selling data on Beta Shares Direct. So we can draw some insight into how we've been investing.

[00:00:30]>> They've given us uh high level aggregate data which should be very clear uh from the 1st of January to the 13th of May.

[00:00:37]So uh almost half a year worth of data and it gives us an insight into how everyday Australians have been reacting to the flurry of noise that we've been hit with this year from >> uh the war in Iran and straight to for moves being closed to inflation ticking up here at home uh and everything in between. It's been a volatile year for Australian investors and we want to unpack what's hot and what's not or particularly what's hot, what's being uh being bought. And then we're going to unpack some key themes that emerge from the data that have been really strong in the first half of the year and we can chat about whether we think they will tail off or whether they'll continue for the second half of the year. Let's start with what has been most popular. I think that's a good place to start. Why don't you tell us Bryce what's hot?

[00:01:26]>> So this is on value by value. Number one is DHHF the all-in-one global growth global diversified. Number two A200 ASX 200. Three is BGBL the global index.

[00:01:39]Number four NDQ NASDAQ. Five is GHHF the geared version of DHHF. Number six is Vanguard's high yield VHY. Number seven is IVV the S&P 500. Uh, number eight is ETP M A. That's a silver ETF. And we'll get into a little bit of the themes later on. Number nine is the Geared ETF, G A R. And number 10 is ECRED. E C R D.

[00:02:05]>> Nice. So, obviously this data is from Beta Shares Direct. And so, the ETFs in there skew towards Beta Shares. But I think there's some interesting themes that emerge that that are applicable across the investing landscape. So any sort of early takeaways there?

[00:02:21]>> Not surprising. I think the fact that global diversified indexes are at the top of the list is no surprise. Uh the ASX 200 ETF being at the top again no surprise. What we can see as we go a little bit down the list is that Australians are embracing leverage.

[00:02:38]>> So GHHF, uh GIA and ECRED are all leveraged ETFs.

[00:02:43]So three of the top 10 by buying volume.

[00:02:46]And then there's also an interest in income that we sort of see in the equity mates community and this reflected here with um Vanguard's high yield ETF coming in at number six.

[00:02:56]>> Yeah. And >> and number 10. How could I forget that one? I own it. Uh any takeaways for you?

[00:03:03]>> I just love that they're they're like your like the rockstar ETFs. It's where you want to start.

[00:03:08]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not like there's anything too fancy going on.

[00:03:12]We're not trying to play too many thematics here.

[00:03:15]We've had turmoil, we've had market chaos, and we're just sticking to the guns.

[00:03:20]>> We'll get to the sexy themes later, but yeah, I think you're right.

[00:03:26]Bedrock positions. We're going to talk about buying patterns and buying the dip a bit later, but I imagine some of these bedrock positions was certainly added to when the market started to dip.

[00:03:36]>> Yeah.

[00:03:36]>> Let's move to the individual stocks because there's some interesting names there. Now, for context on Beta Shares Direct, you can buy the top 400 Aussie stocks. Um, so there's some big names and some uh not so big names there. I'll go down the list of the top 10 by buying value. So, CSL tops the list number one.

[00:03:56]>> Uh, Woodside Energy, then Drone Shield, put a pin in that. Uh, Wisec, Promedicus, uh, 40X, Zip Zero, BHP, and Cockia. what stands out there.

[00:04:10]>> I mean, there's definitely an AI software theme there. You've got Wisec, you've got Promedicus, Zero, 40X. I think what's noticeable as well is it looks like people are trying to be, you know, taking action on stocks that have been down.

[00:04:23]>> Yeah. I mean, >> CSL down, Wise Tech down, Zero down, Cockia smashed.

[00:04:30]>> Yeah. Maybe opportunistic buying.

[00:04:32]>> Yeah. For me, there's like two clear themes that emerge here. one, it's buying the dip on big names or like much loved names that are down as you said CSL, Wise Techch, Zero, Prometicus, Coccia, like seen as quality names that are down. And then the other one is riding momentum.

[00:04:49]>> Yeah, >> Woodside is obviously riding momentum out of the straight of Hormuz. 4DX um is a lesser known name, but it has it's it's like 10 bags in the last year. It's come off recently, but it's been an incredible name, lung imaging technology for um hospitals. So, yeah, I think there's like two clear patterns. Buy the dip or ride the momentum.

[00:05:11]>> Before we talk about buying the dip a little more, Ren, you said you were going to put a pin in drone shield. So, why is that?

[00:05:17]>> Well, do you are you not surprised that it's number three?

[00:05:20]>> No.

[00:05:20]>> Oh, okay.

[00:05:21]>> No.

[00:05:22]>> Well, >> a it's a bit of a cult stock, I would say, among us retail investors. probably close.

[00:05:27]>> It's also at a time when you would expect defense stocks to come to the top.

[00:05:33]>> Sure. Sure.

[00:05:34]>> So, I'm I'm not that surprised.

[00:05:37]>> Okay. Yeah. And look, you know, it's down 11% year to date, but like the volatility, depending on the time frame you look at, in the last 6 months, it's up more than 50%. Their CEO and their leadership team dumped all their stock.

[00:05:48]>> Yeah. Well, they've gone.

[00:05:49]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's um >> not a great sign, I would say. So, it's interesting that >> they're not the only ones in that list though with corporate challenges.

[00:05:58]>> Well, no, certainly not. But it's just interesting that Aussie investors are sort of sticking fat.

[00:06:04]>> Yeah. With this one, I guess you're right. Wisec as well sticking fat. Um, >> I would say Weist was probably a higher quality business than Drone Shield.

[00:06:12]>> CSL also has an empty CEO.

[00:06:14]>> True, true, true. Again, higher quality than Drone Shield.

[00:06:17]>> Yeah. So I just want to touch on uh what the one some of the behavior that's coming through while markets have been really choppy Ren and it uh the data shows that plans for auto investing have nearly doubled while the market was falling. So I think not only are people staying the course but they're using that feature to just really ensure that they're taking the emotion out of it which I love. I love that >> consistently buying the dip. Yeah. So for the data that we have, every month was net buys. Australians were buying more than they were selling, which is good to see. As I said earlier, like there was a lot of volatility.

[00:06:49]Interestingly, um, April 2026 was the peak buying month of of the data that we have.

[00:06:56]>> And so if we think what's happened this year, February 28th, the Iran war kicks off. March was incredibly volatile and everyone was very uncertain about how long the war would last, what it would do to oil prices, what that would do to inflation, uh, and the rest. As we started to get a bit more clarity, it seems that Aussies piled in. They didn't wait for everything to be perfect. They sort of took advantage of the moment and there was a lot of buying in April. So, >> massive >> good investing behavior there.

[00:07:26]>> Yeah. Well, uh, we'll just put some some numbers to it. So, as you said, single biggest month of buying volume. But what were they buying as the market was drawing down, leading hardest into ASX 200, the A200, and then also accumulating DHHF, going after yield with VHY, and then globally as well, NDQ and BGBL were the big ones.

[00:07:47]>> I mean, I just read that as people >> putting more into their core portfolios.

[00:07:51]>> That's all you need to do.

[00:07:52]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all you need to do.

[00:07:54]>> There's some sensible investors out there, which is good to see. And one one thing that really annoys me is um there's this like idea in professional investing that like that everyday investors or retail investors as they call us, we're dumb money.

[00:08:08]>> Um if people have seen the movie Dumb Money, that was kind of the premise behind some of the GameStop melt up. But what we see in the data is that retail investors investing sensibly for the long term.

[00:08:21]>> Yes. So the second thing that's really coming out, Ren, is we've got some bulls out there and we've got some bears out there. They're coming out in force >> and it's being shown through the leverage options and gold.

[00:08:32]>> Oh, and uh bare funds.

[00:08:34]>> And bare funds. So let's start with the bulls. Really, really strong buying.

[00:08:38]Almost 7% of individual buying on the platform was in geared ETFs. So we've got geared G which is Australia, GG US is the US, GGBL which is the global index and then GHHF. So four geared options there. GHF is the sixth biggest buy across the entire platform. Massive.

[00:08:58]>> And then uh in SMSFS in particular, gear alone was four a bit over 4% of SMSF buying uh compared to a bit less than 2% for individuals. M.

[00:09:10]>> So that is people with a long-term time horizon and an unconstrained investment menu in a self-managed super fund saying, "Give me all the leverage."

[00:09:19]>> Yeah, why not?

[00:09:21]>> Then on the flip side, you could say they're bears. Physical gold and silver ETFs accounted for 6.8% of individual buying. So just ahead of the leveraged.

[00:09:31]Some of the big ones, gold, PM gold, uh, Q AU, and then the silver ETF is ETP MAG. Yeah, >> I would look at this though and sort of say that whilst you could say people go to these assets when they are getting a bit of flight to safety, let's not remember what was going on with gold at the start of the year. Let's not forget.

[00:09:52]>> I know what you're saying that there was like this massive bull run in gold and silver and people were probably jumping on the tail of that.

[00:09:59]>> But some of this buying is definitely flight to safety and inflation hedge >> uh particularly when Iran kicks off.

[00:10:07]>> Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah, it's it is like that's what gold it's a textbook case for gold.

[00:10:12]>> It is. It is. Um but let's not forget what's going on.

[00:10:16]>> If you're not convinced that that is um bears coming out, how about this? 1% of total buying on the platform were people buying inverse ETFs. So if the market goes down, they make money. If the market goes up, they lose money. There's two uh notable ones, BBOZ and BBUS.

[00:10:37]One is a bare Australian market, one is a bare US market. Together they were 1% of buying on the platform. So surely you agree that's bear.

[00:10:46]>> Yes, that's that is 100% fair.

[00:10:48]>> Uh famously BBOZ uh was owned by our shadow treasurer for number of years.

[00:10:56]Tim Wilson uh he owned it for like five or six years. These are not longterm products. So we know that over the long term the market grinds ever higher uh driven by you know new companies, new innovation and also just a bit of inflation in there as well.

[00:11:12]And so don't be like Tim Wilson. Don't hold these long term because otherwise you will be like Tim Wilson and lose money on them.

[00:11:18]>> Yeah, big time.

[00:11:20]>> All right. Well, we'll just pause here to say thank you to Beta Shares Direct for supporting this episode. And you can invest with $0 brokerage on over 500 shares and all ASX ETFs with Beta Shares Direct.

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[00:11:38]>> You can create an account in minutes and start building your portfolio today.

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[00:11:55]>> All right. Well, let's have a look at two of the major thematics that were popular for the first half of 2026, Ren.

[00:12:01]And the first one, no surprises, is critical minerals.

[00:12:05]>> Yeah, I think this is this was the big theme coming into the year. If we if we go back to December and January, >> every commodity seemed to be ripping. It was nuts. And unsurprisingly, everyday investors have piled in and the story has played out. The story's been uh a number of themes coming together. So longer term, there's been this sort of like nearshoring or friend shoring as people as countries think about their supply chains and they think about vulnerabilities in their supply chains and try and build uh critical infrastructure or critical you know manufacturing capabilities closer to home. And so that has been a big one.

[00:12:45]Then there's been the massive defense buildup. Um the Europeans have been out in front in that, but also just US, Russia and China just keep spending a lot there. So there's huge spending there. A lot of critical minerals needed for um weapon systems and the Americans are fast realizing that China is a choke point for a lot of those critical minerals. Uh so that has been one and then we get to the AI infrastructure story. Now uh the hyperscalers in 2026 are going to spend I think we're at about 700 billion is now the latest estimate in terms of just building data centers. Everything is a constraint now.

[00:13:25]Critical minerals, electricity, people to build it, land, GPUs themselves, everything is a constraint. The only thing that's not a constraint is the amount of cash these companies have. So Critical Minerals has become a choke point there as well. And so all of that has led to some serious buying, >> big buying. 5 a.5% of individual investor buyer was in this thematic. And some of the big buys were some ETFs. So there's the gold miners ETF, Beta Shares Gold Miners ETF, MNRS. There's the Beta Shares Energy Transition Metals ETF, XMET. There's the Global X Copper Miners ETF, Wire. And then uranium was popular as well. UNM, which is the Beta Shares Global Uranium ETF. Some individual companies snuck in there as well.

[00:14:10]Lionus, the rare earth's company. But look, this was bigger than people buying banks. It was bigger than crypto. And uh it was on par with the entire allocation to just broad global equities. So this was hot.

[00:14:21]>> Unsurprisingly for everything I just said and the stories continued, gold and silver have taken a bit of a break, but you know, recently we saw copper hit a new all-time high. Lithium has had, you know, a good year. Uh >> just keeps playing out.

[00:14:34]>> Yeah. Personally, I'm in wire. Um, in the portfolio competition that I'm doing, I did have uranium, but yeah, this is a a thematic that I'm definitely in.

[00:14:45]>> Yeah. Are you?

[00:14:46]>> Yeah. The Global X AI infrastructure ETF.

[00:14:48]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:14:49]>> Yeah.

[00:14:49]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:50]>> Uh, so that's one big theme. No points for guessing the other big theme, defense and geopolitics.

[00:14:57]>> Yeah. I mean, uh, hard to miss this one.

[00:15:00]And we've, you know, individual stocks with drone shield and the like. But the big big theme here is the increase in uh in spending globally. We've seen the Europeans with their um rearming of Europe's commit billions and billions of dollars. Obviously, the US is spending up billions with its uh defense. I think Trump wants to increase the defense budget by almost 50% to $1.5 trillion.

[00:15:26]So this is a a huge theme that's playing out and uh and will obviously continue to do so. It's no surprise that some of the ETFs in this space are hot.

[00:15:36]>> Yeah. The interesting thing. So let's we'll talk about buying and then we'll talk about performance. So there are three big ones in Australia. Armor, the beta shares one, ARM, then DFND. Defend is the VANC one. And then DTEK DTEC is the Global X uh ETF. We actually did an episode where we compared all three in detail. So, we'll include a link in the show notes if you want to look under the hood of those. All three together were about 0.75% of buying on the platform.

[00:16:05]Add in Drone Shield that we've talked about 1.1% of all buying on the platform to put that in context is the equivalent of the big banks um on the platform.

[00:16:16]>> Interestingly, now this has been and I own Armor the Beta Shares one. If there was ever a year where you think defense ATFs would do well, it's the first half of 2026. But DTEK is down 8% year to date. Uh VanX Global Defense is down 6% year to date. And the Beta Shares one is down just shy of 5% year to date.

[00:16:38]>> The time to buy them was this time last year.

[00:16:40]>> Yeah.

[00:16:40]>> Because a lot of the news that drove the increase in and the phenomenal performance was last year. coming into the start of this year was the big announcements on Europe and new budgets and all of that sort of stuff actually happened last year.

[00:16:56]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like investors who move quickly then the share prices moved. Obviously the ETFs move with the share prices.

[00:17:05]>> I would hazard a guess that there's probably another wave of news coming at some point. Like Trump is trying to get the >> uh stupidly large increase to their US's already massive defense budget pass. M there's going to need to be a lot of rearming after Iran as obviously Europe is going to have to double down on its defense spending. So I'm not I'm not saying like you should go out and buy these ETFs. I'm just saying expect more defense spending in the coming years.

[00:17:32]>> Australia, we've bumped up our defense spending. We're now targeting 3% of GDP.

[00:17:36]>> It wasn't that long ago that 2% of GDP was a good target to try and hit. Yeah.

[00:17:41]So yeah, I think uh unsurprisingly everyday Australians are moving with some of the big macro themes at the moment.

[00:17:48]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:48]>> Well, those are the four the four big themes and some of the hot ETFs and stocks that have been bought over the last sort of 6 months or five and a bit months um for 2026. Going to be very interesting to see how it plays out for the remainder of the year. But I think my takeaway, Ren, is it great. It's great to see from like an ETF and behavioral point of view that we've spoken on the show, panic buying is where it's at. When markets are down, you want to take those opportunities. It certainly has come through in the data that that's what you know the EquityMates community and retail investors were doing. So, from that point of view, awesome.

[00:18:21]>> Yeah, >> great to see.

[00:18:23]>> Keep dollar cost averaging. Keep being opportunistic when there's a dip. Uh and we'll see you in 30 to 40 years.

[00:18:33]This podcast is intended for education and entertainment purposes only. Any advice is general advice and has not taken into account your personal financial circumstances. Before acting on general advice, you should consider if it is relevant to your needs. If unsure, speak to a financial professional. The host of this podcast and their guests may have positions in the companies mentioned. Equity mates media is part of the beta shares group but maintains editorial independence. We operate under Australian financial services license 540697.