Retail investors are buying the most stocks since March 2022, but they’re not necessarily in the same names as they were then. Individual traders invested roughly $6.8 billion this past week, about $2.8 billion of which went into single stocks, according to a Wednesday note from J.P. Morgan. Both represented the strongest inflows from retail traders in more than a year. Gamestop resurfaced as a retail favorite among the names traders were snapping up, the bank’s Peng Cheng wrote but, broadly speaking, other meme stocks such as AMC did not see the same level of interest. Instead, retail traders were mainly seen buying the dip in mega-cap tech stocks, which underperformed over the past week after their rally last month. For example, Tesla shares fell 3.2% over the one-week period, while Nvidia dropped 2.6%, the note showed. Meta Platforms was down 6.1%. Individual investors are coming back just as the recent stock rally takes a breather. As of Thursday, the major averages were headed for their first losing week in six. Last Friday, the S & P 500 had notched a fresh high for the year. Retail investors are also buying the dip in Magnificent 7 stocks after the group’s strong gains last month and this year. In November, Tesla surged more than 19%, while Nvidia gained roughly 14%. Tech stocks have underperformed in December so far, amid concerns they may be overvalued after their huge rallies in 2023 and as investors rotate into laggards such as health care and small caps entering the year’s final weeks. For example, the Russell 2000 is up more than 2% this month, while the S & P 500 is negative. .RUT .SPX 1M mountain Russell 2000 smallcaps vs S & P 500 large caps over past month. — With reporting by CNBC’s Michael Bloom
