As summer starts to fade in the U.S., we take another look at retail flows and activity using our Nasdaq Data Link data.
One surprising thing it shows is that retail has become less bullish, and recently turned into net-sellers of stocks, despite the continued market recovery following announcements made after the tariffs initially announced in March and April.
Retail value trading accelerates
Our first chart today shows that, even over the summer, retail trading value traded has continued to grow (green in the chart below). So far in 2025, we’ve seen the highest level of value traded by retail ever. That has lifted retail’s average daily dollar volume traded from ~$40bn in 2024 to $55bn in 2025.
Due to volatility and rising prices, market-wide volumes and values are also up in 2025. If we adjust for market-wide trends we see that the increase in retail trade hasn’t outpaced the rest of the market.
Chart 1: Value trade rising mostly because of prices rising
We’d also note that retail still makes up a smaller proportion of overall value traded, partially due to their higher participation in lower-priced stocks.
Retail is less bullish on companies even as market rallies
Looking at net flows in company stocks tells a bit of a contrarian story. We see a divergence of the market and flows. Instead of buying the rally, the data suggests investors have been becoming less and less bullish in recent months.
Tech, previously a popular sector with strong net buying (orange in the chart below), led this momentum shift. In August, retail were small buyers of Tech and Real Estate, but sellers of everything else. That’s despite the market (SPY) reaching new record highs.
Chart 2: Net flows by month and sector (market returns in green line)
Retail buying of most popular stocks, totals $191bn since 2017
Nasdaq Data Link has data tracking retail trading since 2017.
We’ve seen in the past that often retail trading can be quite concentrated in popular stocks, often consistently buying those stocks. For example, NVDA accounts for 20% of all net inflows.
Today we look at just how much buying that adds to.
The chart below shows the stocks with the ten largest cumulative retail net-buying since 2017. Amazingly, despite the size of retail buying, these totals are small compared to the market capitalization of these companies.
Chart 3: Top 10 stocks by retail buying since 2017
Across all stocks, the total net buying adds to$191bn in company stocks by retail since 2017.
ETFs still net to buy (almost) every single day!
Speaking of net buying – looking at ETFs (yellow in the chart below), we see that even during the market uncertainty of March and April, retail were net buyers on all but two days this year.
Stocks, in contrast, are more mixed. Often when the market sells off (green in the chart below) we see days of net selling – more than offset by days of net buying as the market rallies (blue bars in Chart 4) shows this trend clearly.
Chart 4: Daily net flows of ETFs and stocks (market returns in green line)
Just for fun, we decided to add up allETF trading over the same period as we used above for stocks.
Across all ETFs, the data shows retail have invested $846bn into ETFs since 2017. Amazingly, that’s only 7% of all ETF assets today.
That’s in contrast to the $191bn added to company stocks over the same period.
The more retail flows change, the more some things stay the same
We’ve seen gross retail trading value continuing to grow – mostly helped recently by gains in stock prices.
One surprise this year that we are seeing in the net trading of company stocks: retail are fading the current market rally.
Although another trend hasn’t changed: retail (still) loves buying ETFs.