Rocket Lab has knocked Air New Zealand off the top of the Sharesies platform, becoming the most widely held individual company among the retail investing app’s hundreds of thousands of New Zealand and Australian users. The change, revealed in Sharesies’ latest quarterly index for the three months to the end of June, marks the first time the national carrier has lost the number one company spot since the index began reporting in 2023.
Nearly 70,000 Sharesies investors now hold shares in the Long Beach and Auckland space company, according to figures published by RNZ. That is enough to lift it past Air New Zealand, which had sat at the top of the most held table for the entire life of the index. Rocket Lab is not the single most held investment on the platform overall, though. That title still belongs to the Smart US 500 exchange traded fund, which spreads money across the largest listed companies in the United States and remains the default entry point for many first time investors.
The shift says as much about mood as it does about any one company. The Sharesies Index, which tracks retail investor sentiment on a scale where 50 is neutral, climbed from 43 at the start of the quarter to 57 by the end, briefly peaking at 61 in the middle of June. That moved the platform’s users out of what Sharesies calls the balanced range and into confident territory. Only three months earlier, sentiment had been sitting on the cautious side of the ledger, weighed down by higher interest rates and a soft domestic economy.
Several money flow measures moved in the same direction. Sharesies members deposited $440 million in June alone. The platform’s deposit ratio, which compares money coming in against money going out, averaged 2.08 across the quarter, up from 1.94 in the previous three months, and spiked as high as 3.22 in early June. The ratio of buyers to sellers reached 1.46 in the middle of June, its highest reading in 19 months, meaning far more people were putting money into the market than pulling it out.
What is notable is that the renewed appetite has not translated into reckless single stock betting. The share of money going into individual companies rather than diversified funds rose only modestly, from 68 per cent to 71 per cent on average across the quarter. Jordan Cunningham, Sharesies head of data and analytics, said the pattern showed people were staying disciplined even as confidence returned. “Investors are not going all out on individual shares, and are making sure they spread their risk,” Cunningham said.
Rocket Lab’s rise up the table has tracked a wild year for its share price. The company, founded in New Zealand by Peter Beck and now dual listed with its main quote on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker RKLB, hit a record closing price of US$150.23 on 27 May before pulling back sharply. By 14 July it had fallen to around US$78.81, roughly half its 52 week high, according to market data compiled by StockAnalysis. Even after that correction the stock is worth many times what it fetched a year ago, and the volatility appears to have drawn buyers in rather than scaring them off. For a generation of younger New Zealand investors, a homegrown rocket maker taking on the likes of SpaceX has proved a far more compelling story than a domestic airline still working through the effects of a jump in jet fuel costs.
SpaceX itself has become a fixture on the platform through Sharesies’ access to private company shares. Elon Musk’s unlisted rocket firm is now the 11th most widely held company on Sharesies, with about 23,000 investors, an unusual result given it cannot be bought on any public exchange. The appetite for space names extends into retirement savings as well. More than 4,300 members of the Sharesies KiwiSaver Scheme now hold Rocket Lab within their retirement accounts, a sign the enthusiasm is not confined to money people are willing to gamble with.
Air New Zealand’s slide down the company rankings is less a verdict on the airline than a reflection of where new money is going. The carrier warned earlier in the year that a surge in global jet fuel prices, driven by conflict in the Middle East, would push it to a full year loss, and its shares have drifted rather than run. It remains one of the most held stocks on the platform and one of the most recognised names on the New Zealand market. It has simply been overtaken by an investment story with more momentum behind it.
For Sharesies, which now reports hundreds of thousands of active members across New Zealand and Australia, the numbers point to a retail base that has regained its nerve after a cautious start to the year, while still hedging its bets across funds rather than piling everything into single names. Whether that confidence holds through the second half of 2026 will depend on how the domestic economy, interest rates and the fortunes of a handful of high profile stocks play out.
What do you make of Rocket Lab overtaking Air New Zealand as the most held company on Sharesies? Are you investing more confidently this year, or staying cautious? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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