{"id":3004,"date":"2025-12-12T12:42:57","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2025-12-12T12:42:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:42:57","slug":"retail-investors-drive-stocks-to-a-pre-christmas-all-time-high-and-wall-street-eyes-a-moment-to-sell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=3004","title":{"rendered":"Retail investors drive stocks to a pre-Christmas all-time high\u2014and Wall Street eyes a moment to sell"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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S&P 500 futures ticked downward 0.22% this morning, an indicator that some traders decided overnight to lock in their gains from yesterday\u2019s close, when the index reached a new all-time high of 6,901. The peak was entirely predictable, given that U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell delivered a new dose of liquidity, as expected, via Wednesday\u2019s 0.25% interest rate cut.<\/p>\n

Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.51% this morning, premarket, as traders picked winners and losers in the tech sector. Oracle lost another 1% overnight. It\u2019s down more than 9% over the last five sessions after reporting revenue below <\/em>expectations and capital expenditure above<\/em> expectations. Alphabet (Google) by contrast was up 0.26% in overnight trading.<\/p>\n

The bigger picture is the fact that the S&P 500 has now risen 17.33% year to date. <\/p>\n

The trigger for that came from Powell telegraphing 175 basis points of cuts since last year.\u00a0But the markets have also been driven by retail investors\u2014individuals, as opposed to financial institutions\u2014buying into exchange-traded funds and individual tech stocks, according to Arun Jain and his colleagues at JPMorgan.<\/p>\n

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In the week up to December 10, retail investors ploughed $7.8 billion into stocks, above the $6.3 billion weekly average. \u201cRetail investors continued to favor ETFs (+$6.3B) over Single Stocks (+$1.5B),\u201d they told clients in a note seen by Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201c2025 is set to be a record year for retail traders in terms of flows (tracking at ~1.9x the 5y avg), 53% above the levels seen last year and 14% above the previous peak during the retail mania of 2021,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Retail investors probably did very well in the markets this year because they tended to buy the dips\u2014there was a 38% gain between the market\u2019s April low and yesterday\u2014they bought ETFs, and they bought gold (up 65% year to date), the JPM team said.<\/p>\n

Retail trading volume has doubled since 2010, according to the Financial Times, and individual investors are now more active than mutual funds and hedge funds.<\/p>\n

Retail investors are so enthusiastic for risk assets that some people on Wall Street are starting to worry about it. The Bank of International Settlements\u2014a sort of bank for central banks\u2014published a paper recently arguing that retail traders now represent the dumb money in the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cRetail investors continued to pour money into U.S. equity funds, even as institutional investors gradually withdrew,\u201d the bank wrote. \u201cAppetite for precious metals may underscore market participants seeking at least some safe asset exposure in the event that things turn sour. But part of the surge can also be traced to investors trying to take advantage of the momentum in search of price appreciation, consistent with elevated risk-taking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Hartnett and his colleagues at Bank of America see it as as sell-signal. Their \u201cBull & Bear Indicator\u201d\u2014a gauge that measures \u201cinvestor fear and greed\u201d from technical market data such as fund flows\u2014now stands at 7.8, just below the \u201cextreme bullishness\u201d level that suggests it might be a good time to cash out:<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • S&P 500 futures<\/strong> were down 0.22% this morning. The last session closed up 0.21% to hit a new record high of 6,901.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • STOXX Europe 600<\/strong> was up 0.37% in early trading.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • The U.K.\u2019s FTSE 100<\/strong> was up 0.38% in early trading.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 <\/strong>was up 1.37%.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • China\u2019s CSI 300<\/strong> was up 0.63%.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • The South Korea KOSPI<\/strong> was up 1.38%.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • India\u2019s NIFTY 50<\/strong> was up 0.51%.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • Bitcoin<\/strong> went to $92K.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
    \n
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    #Retail #investors #drive #stocks #preChristmas #alltime #highand #Wall #Street #eyes #moment #sell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    S&P 500 futures ticked dow… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3094,656,1202,3096,3095,92,166,3097,3092,3093,351,183,91,221,891,890],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}