Business / Economy

US stocks dominate post-election trading

15:03 pm on 8 November 2024

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during the morning trading on November 07, 2024 in New York City. Photo: AFP

New Zealand investors appear to be looking for an opportunity to cash in on Donald Trump's US election victory.

Investment platform Sharesies said it had its highest-ever trading day on Thursday, with $67 million in trades.

Sharesies co-founder and co-chief executive Leighton Roberts said: "As many of us around the world watched the US election results play out, unsurprisingly most of the action on our platform was dominated by investors buying and selling across the US and Australian exchanges.

"Highly traded instruments were Tesla, NVDIA, and New Zealand's own Rocket Lab. This comes on the back of much more buying activity, as interest rates start to decrease."

At investment platform Stake, Tesla was the most traded stock in the day after the election result, up 500 percent from the day before.

There were an equal number of buys and sells of the stock.

Tesla was the most traded stock on Stake the day after the election result, up 500 percent on the previous day. Photo: AFP / JULIEN DE ROSA

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said the market reaction to the win had been very strong, which had affected many investors, including in KiwiSaver.

He said there was likely be a lot of market volatility over the coming months.

"There's that level of caution... just because there's a good strong reaction today doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow, doesn't mean you should immediately jump to make a change [to investments]."

He said people should think about getting professional advice on their investing decisions. "There has been a strong market reaction but that has already happened. People wanting to jump on potentially because it's happened before and in the last day might be disappointed.

"Equally they might not, but the challenge is we do expect volatility as everyone tried to pick the path ahead."

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