Key takeaways: 

• Baby Boomers using the Selfwealth platform for investing preferred individual ASX-listed shares ahead of ETFs and US shares. 

• Gen X investors made the greatest number of trades in US shares during FY24. 

• Selfwealth Millennials and Gen Z investors displayed greater buying conviction over the year, underpinned by a heavy bias favouring investing in ETFs. 

From Baby Boomers to Millennials, and Gen X to Gen Z investors, it should come as no surprise that these age cohorts have different interests and approaches to investing in the share market.  

However, with FY 23/24 now behind us, and a wealth of Selfwealth data at our fingertips, it’s time to dig deeper and uncover some of these trends. 

We’re looking at the most popular trades by age group, as well as some of the underlying themes behind each segment’s trading activity in the financial year ending June 30, 2024. 

Baby Boomers 

Selfwealth investors representing the Baby Boomer cohort displayed a strong inclination to invest in and trade ASX-listed blue chip shares over international securities. 

Not only were there no US shares among the top ten securities by trades for this cohort, but only two US shares featured among the top 100 most actively traded securities - Tesla (46th), Nvidia (99th). 

Meanwhile, unlike each of the other age demographics, ETFs were not featured among the top ten most traded securities for Baby Boomers. In many respects, this age group showed a greater willingness to invest in individual shares. 

However, Baby Boomers also displayed a greater disposition to actively trade said positions, or otherwise showed less conviction in their long-term outlooks, with selling representing a far greater portion of all trading activity. The buy-to-sell ratio across the top ten trades was 54.4%, which was approximately 20 to 25 percentage points lower than other groups. 

And when it came to individual positions, Baby Boomers were the only investors where Fortescue (ASX: FMG) was traded more frequently than BHP (ASX: BHP) and Pilbara Minerals (ASX: PLS), which were the top two non-ETF securities for all other age cohorts. 

Generation X 

On a relative basis, Gen X investors within the Selfwealth community showed the greatest level of engagement with US shares.  

Not only was this group the only cohort to feature a US stock, Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN), inside the top ten trades, but overall trading volumes for US shares were markedly higher than other age segments. This included the likes of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which finished the period just outside the top ten, ranked 11th and 13th respectively. 

In fact, overall trades in US shares by Generation X investors in the Selfwealth community were approximately three times those of Baby Boomers, and even slightly more than the combined total traded by Millennials and Gen Z investors. 

The top ten securities traded accounted for just 12.6% of all trades made by Generation X investors, which was the lowest percentage across the four groups. This suggests a more even spread of trading activity across all securities. 

Millennials 

The top ten most traded securities by Selfwealth Millennials represented 20.2% of all trades made by said investors, which was well below the spread displayed by Gen Z, but notably higher than the breadth of trading among Gen X investors and Baby Boomers on the Selfwealth platform.  

However, this age cohort traded the greatest number of individual unique holdings through the financial year, with trades involving 4,985 different securities. 

Buying conviction dominated the top ten most traded names for this cohort, with the average buy-to-sell ratio being 78.3% - only a fraction adrift of the result from Gen Z. A key driver for this high ratio is likely to be the fact that ETFs were a popular trading tool for Selfwealth Millennials in FY24, with eight of the top ten trades being ASX-listed funds. 

Furthermore, Millennials also displayed strong trading interest in US shares, second only to Gen X investors for overall trading volumes in this asset class. 

Generation Z 

With the greatest relative interest in ETFs of any age group in relation to all trades, the eight most popular trades by Gen Z Selfwealth members involved exchange-traded funds.  

Overall, the top ten most actively traded securities by Gen Z investors accounted for 32.4% of all trades made by this group, which was over 12 percentage points higher than Millennials, and nearly 20 percentage points higher than the segment with the lowest concentration (Gen X). 

In line with the above, Generation Z investors traded a far narrower range of securities, with just 2,423 unique securities traded across the financial year - this was less than 50% of the breadth of securities traded by the likes of Millennials. 

Nonetheless, Gen Z investors showed the greatest level of buying conviction among the most popular names traded. Across the top ten traded securities, the average buy-to-sell ratio was 79.3%, demonstrating a long-term focus among this segment of young investors.