Retail traders pump $67 billion into US stocks

Investors have invested about $70 billion in US stocks this year. This is on the high side, especially as professional money managers reduce their market exposure in reaction to concerns over Donald Trump’s plans.

This year, retail investors invested a total of $67bn in US stocks and exchange-traded funds, almost the same amount as the $71bn they invested during the last three months of 2024. 

The substantial flow shows that individual investors are still optimistic about Wall Street stocks, even though things have been very rough this year. This is all thanks to the president’s unpredictable tariff plans. Not to forget the rise of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which shook Silicon Valley.

However, analysts have been advising people to buy as much as possible now instead of panicking. In fact, Steve Sosnick, chief market strategist at Interactive Brokers, said, “Dip-buying has been an essentially foolproof strategy for four of the past five years […] Doing something that works remarkably well for so long means you’re conditioned to stick with it.”

A user on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets discussion board also came up with a slogan: “Respect the dip, be the dip, BUY THE DIP!” Based on the available market data, this sentiment happens to be working.

Big investors sell as retail investors buy

According to figures from Goldman Sachs, individual investors have only been net sellers of US stocks seven times this year, even though the S&P 500 has gone down 25 days. On the other hand, big investors, who Bank of America monitors, cut their US equity holdings in March in the biggest way ever.

In addition, investors who like to take risks have kept buying shares in companies that were big winners in the last two years but lost a lot of money in 2025.

Nvidia shares and Tesla shares are the most popular. A report from JPMorgan Chase shows that individual investors bought $3.2B worth of Tesla shares and $1.9B worth of Nvidia shares just last week. To explain this, a law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Dhruv Aggarwal said that retail investors tend to go for well-known names. 

Steve Sosnick said that demand for the twice-leveraged ETFs that track and amplify Tesla and Nvidia gains or losses has been just as strong. He also said that stores’ seemingly endless desire for these kinds of products makes some sense, given how profitable it has been to buy stocks when they are down lately.

However, big investors are not moved by these sentiments. Apparently,  some institutional investors and Wall Street researchers think that rising consumer demand is a reason to be cautious, even though it seems counterintuitive.

Stock futures are going down 

This year, the S&P 500 on Wall Street has dropped 2%, and the technology sector of the index has dropped 8%. The drop is very different from 2023 and 2024 when the S&P 500 went up sharply thanks to a rise in Big Tech stocks.

Similar things have been happening lately. The market has made up a lot of the ground it lost this year. As the market opened on Monday, the 30-stock Dow went up almost 600 points or 1.4%, the S&P 500 went up 1.8%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite went up 2.3%. This is because traders became more hopeful when news came out that the White House might limit the effects of tariffs. 

However, stock futures in the U.S. went down a little on Tuesday morning. The move came after the major averages went up on growing hopes that President Donald Trump would change his plans for broad tariffs.

Those for the S&P 500 went down by 0.15%, and those for the Nasdaq 100 dropped 0.23%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 68 points or 0.16%, taken away from the futures.

Things will only settle fully after clarity on Trump’s administration policies. For now, Wall Street is still worried about rising prices and slower economic growth while it waits for the Trump administration to respond with tariffs on April 2. 

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