Retail stock traders bought the dip and now—after an 18% rally—they’re taking their gains
- Investors appeared to consolidate their gains from the last few days of trading by engaging in some mild selling today. The S&P 500 rose 0.1% yesterday but S&P futures sunk 0.58% this morning premarket. India’s Nifty 50 rose 1.72% today but markets retreated across much of the rest of the globe.
The S&P 500 index has risen 18% from its low on April 8, after President Trump tanked stock markets globally by announcing aggressive tariffs on imports to the U.S. This morning, S&P futures declined marginally following small selloffs in Europe, the U.K., and much of Asia. It looks like investors, having enjoyed their gains from the last month, are taking some profits.
Who made the gains? Retail traders, according to JPMorgan’s Emma Wu and her team.
“Retail traders have net bought $50Bn in cash equity as the market bounced since Apr 8th. This Monday was the first time we've seen profit-taking flow, with -$555Mn (-2.7z below 1M average) in cash equity and -$2Bn (-1.9z) in options … They quickly returned to aggressive buyers following the softer inflation print on Tue (+$1.8Bn cash + $21Mn option) and continued on Wed,” she told clients in a research note seen by Fortune.
“In our view, retail traders [were] one of the main drivers of the market rally in the last week of Apr, amid subdued institutional activity and low [professional money manager] positioning. Their market share reached 36% on Apr 28/29th, the highest level in our history vs. a YTD average of 21% and a long-term average of 12%” she said.
Elsewhere in Analyst Land, economists are resetting their models to estimate the impact of Trump’s tariffs on global trade, which are currently being negotiated and may change over time.
“We expect the US’s effective tariff rate to increase ... to its highest level since the 1930s,” Jan Hatzius and his team at Goldman Sachs told clients. “Applying estimates from a range of economic studies suggests that a 13pp increase in domestic and foreign tariffs will lower U.S. real income by around 1% in the long run.”
Here's a snapshot of today’s action prior to the opening bell in New York:
- The S&P 500 rose 0.1% yesterday but S&P futures sunk 0.58% this morning premarket.
- Reddit was up 11%.
- India’s Nifty 50 rose 1.72% today but global markets retreated across much of the rest of the globe:
- The Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.2% in early trading.
- The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.25%.
- In Asia, the major indexes in China, Japan, and South Korea all declined this morning.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com