Retail Buying And Participation Blow Away All Records In H1 2025

Something remarkable happened in the first half of 2025, and especially the 2nd quarter - at a time when most institutional and hedge fund investors had staged a buyers strike, or were actively pressing shorts, retail investors did that they always do after the S&P tumbled into Trump's liberation day, and the subsequent crash: they BTFD with a frenzy not seen since the days of the Jan 2021 meme stonk explosion. 

We first noted this last month when we said that "Retail has gone full tilt, trading more aggressively than during the post-stimmy meme stonk euphoria", and pointed out that pennystocks (i.e., "sub-dollars") had just hit a record 47.4% of total market volume according to Goldman.