Indian investors are buying these US stocks but FAANG not priority buys

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Tesla, Nio, Riot Blockchain, Gamestop and Xpeng are the top three most-bought US stocks by Indians, according to a Winvesta Investors Pulse Report. On the other hand, the report said that passive investments are also gaining interest among Indian investors with about 25% investing in ETFs.

Winvesta Investor Pulse Report’ is a nationwide study that encapsulates the investment behaviour among Indians collected from investors on the Winvesta platform between the period March 27, 2020 and March 20, 2021.

The study highlighted that technology stocks continued to be preferred by most Indians, followed by electric vehicles and blockchain sectors. This clearly indicates how the latter two sectors have gained popularity among Indians in the last year.

In the ETF space, Winvesta added that the majority of investors have invested in QQQ (Nasdaq 100) ETF, followed by VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index), ARKG (ARK Genomic Revolution), SPY (S&P500), and ARKK (ARK Innovation). Geographical ETFs and ADRs make about 10% of the investments on Winvesta’s platform.

Swastik Nigam, Founder and CEO, Winvesta, said, “While launching Winvesta, we observed a strong home bias among Indian investors, which disallows participation in global growth stories. Our objective behind starting Winvesta was to make Indian investors realize the importance of geographical diversification and facilitate seamless overseas investments. In a way, the pandemic was an eye-opener for many because when Indian markets were not performing well, investors realised the value of investing in overseas markets. We have received tremendous interest from Indian investors to invest in US stocks and ETFs. Today, an average account size of an investor on Winvesta’s platform is about $5000, with an average transaction of about $800. Investors are aware of the benefits of a well-diversified portfolio, and going ahead, we are confident of gaining more traction from Indian investors.”

Although for many Indian investors, US investing is synonymous with the popular FAANG stocks, today FAANGs make up only 17% of the total stock investments on Winvesta’s platform. This ratio has been trending downwards since the beginning of last year as other high growth stocks like Tesla, NIO, and RIOT took the lead from the tech giants. Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft continue to be among the top 10 popular stocks on the platform.

FAANG is an acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (formerly known as Google).

“With the recent strength in the rupee and also the financial year ending, we have also noticed increased remittance sizes as investors make use of this financial year’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) quota”, said Prateek Jain, Co-founder Winvesta and further added, “Lately, we are seeing Indian investors getting bullish with passive investing and looking at investing in US ETFs which could give them exposure to innovative themes and markets beyond the USA.”

Winvesta, which started its operations just two days after the national lockdown, currently has an investor base across India, with more than 60% of them being millennial (25-40years). The majority of the investors are male (94%). Delhi (NCR), Bengaluru, and Mumbai make up almost 25% of its client base, followed by Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Nearly 45% of Winvesta’s client base is from metropolitan cities.