Unfazed by the "black" week in US stocks, a large number of retail investors are seizing the opportunity "fallen out" of the market

According to multiple reports, during most of the recent major fluctuations in the US stock market, retail investors have been buyers. Despite being hit by the global stock market crash on "Black Monday," many retail investors are still buying.

It is worth noting that while retail investors were bottom fishing in popular tech stocks during the downturn, they also showed some signs of caution.

Market research and analysis company Vanda Research found that retail investors were still net buyers of stocks such as Nvidia, Intel, AMD, etc. during the market storm. In addition, retail investors also bought more of the ETF TLT, which tracks US Treasury bonds with a maturity of over 20 years. Overall, retail investors show no signs of giving up and continue to buy on dips.

The retail investors counted by Vanda refer to those who engage in independent investment activities without relying on large brokerage firms, financial advisors, or private banks to handle their trading activities.

A spokesperson for the "retail investor headquarters" Robinhood cited data provided by the company's founder Vladimir Tenev, stating that the company received $1 billion in new cash from retail investor clients in the first week of August. $500 million of which was deposited into accounts during the market crash on Monday. In comparison, the average daily deposit amount in the second quarter of this year was less than $350 million.

However, Robinhood's clients were unable to execute orders on its platform during overnight trading hours because the Blue Ocean ATS, which handles such trades, could not handle the clients' "extreme demands."

However, data from JP Morgan contradicts the above situation. Another report released by JP Morgan analysts stated that retail investors on Monday were "active net sellers," with most of the selling pressure occurring in the first hour of trading that day, impacting the market.

Although different data sources have some deviations in the trading activities of retail investors on Monday, both Vanda and JP Morgan stated that during the market recovery on Tuesday and Wednesday, retail investors were steadfast buyers. On Tuesday, US stocks rebounded slightly from the sharp drop on Monday, but fell again on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 index closing slightly higher than Monday.

US stocks recorded a strong rebound on Thursday, with the S&P 500 index rising over 2%, marking its best performance in nearly two years. However, Vanda pointed out that during the market recovery on Thursday, retail investors' interest in long-term US bonds TLT surged, making it the second largest security in terms of purchases after Nvidia by Thursday morning.

As a defensive asset, TLT's rising popularity may indicate that retail investors are becoming increasingly concerned about the outlook for the US stock market and are seeking safe havens, highlighting their cautious sentiment.

Alight Solutions tracks trading activities of approximately 2 million 401(k) retirement accounts, with a total fund size of $200 billion. The company's research director stated that they found that the investors they track are actively moving funds out of stock funds and into money market funds and fixed income products, with trading volume about eight times the average level However, in absolute terms, the scale of the fund transfer mentioned above is still very small. Only 0.1% of the $200 billion funds tracked by Alight Solutions have been transferred from one investment strategy to another