Everyday Traders Go From Fringe Players to Dominant Market Force; Buy the dip
It was the biggest year for individual investors since the GameStop frenzy of 2021. ‘It’s not a passing trend.’
The billions that these traders plowed into the markets this year helped power the S&P 500 through every selloff and toward a 16% gain in 2025, the index’s third back-to-back year of double-digit gains.
The growing influence of everyday investors has also come with more risk. Some advocates and industry executives have expressed concern that young traders have been encouraged to seek out quick hits and rapid gains at the expense of sustainable habits.
Individual investors’ impulse to pile into stocks when prices slide played a major role in the market’s rapid recovery from April’s tariff turmoil, when President Trump unveiled an aggressive plan for reciprocal tariffs that sent equities tumbling.
Retail traders plowed a record net $40 billion into stocks that month, JP Morgan Chase analysts reported, helping to kick-start the rebound.
That mirrored a similar response after the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020—another moment in which individual investors stepped in to buy the dip.
“You could argue this is the second time that retail has bailed out the market,” said Steve Quirk, chief brokerage officer at Robinhood.
“When there’s a crisis, it’s retail [investors] to the rescue—which is the polar opposite of what it used to be.”
Wall Street Journal Dec. 31, 2025
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