The 10 Most Actively Traded OTCQX And OTCQB Stocks In October

When the market is volatile, investors flee to safety.

Often, investors will retreat out of growth names and into more established industries. We saw that trend play out in October on the over-the-counter markets.

In September, when we last wrote about the most active OTC Markets’ securities, seven of the top 10 were in the cannabis or cryptocurrency industries. That was hardly surprising considering the volatile and emerging nature of those two sectors and the fact that they’d performed well in 2018 up to that point.

But this was not the case last month. While some of the most recognized cannabis leaders remained among the most active securities, several more developed names made their way to the top of the leaderboard in terms of total dollar volume on the over-the-counter markets.

Here are October’s top 10 most actively traded stocks on the OTC Markets. The list is separated into two groups based on where the stocks trade. The top-tier OTCQX Market, where companies must maintain more stringent financial standards, and which excludes penny stocks, and the middle-tier OTCQB Market, tailored for early-stage and developing U.S. and international companies.

(Note: Aurora and Aphria both graduated to an exchange as of Oct. 24 and Nov. 2 respectively.)

OTCQX

The top 5 most actively traded securities on the OTCQX Market in the month of October included one cannabis stock, Aurora, but that was accompanied by notable pharmaceutical, chemical, energy, and food conglomerates.

This is a far cry from September’s top five, which included Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd. TGODF and the Bitcoin Investment Trust GBTC representing more emerging growth sectors.

While no particular equity or sector can be considered completely risk-free, companies in established industries are widely considered safer than their counterparts in the cannabis and cryptocurrency space. Another point worth noting is that all four of the European-based companies comprising the OTCQX most active list are among the largest in their respective countries, indicating investor appetite for multinational companies in well-established industries for the month of October.

OTCQB

The only difference between this month’s OTCQB most active list and that of September is that MariMed replaced Namaste Technologies Inc. NXTTF

It’s not a total surprise to see cannabis stocks continue to be the most actively-traded among the OTCQB Market, as it is well-suited for emerging companies.

With the market settling down somewhat after a volatile October — the end of the midterm election cycle and November’s Federal Reserve meeting undoubtedly helped in that regard — it will be interesting to see if this trend continues into next month.

Click here to see the full list of October’s most active over-the-counter equities, along with their respective September and October dollar volume.

Click here to see the full list of September’s most active over-the-counter equities, along with their respective August and September, dollar volume.

OTC Markets is a content partner of Benzinga