For the better part of five years, retail investors have been the market’s most reliable buyers. Through meme stock mania, rate hikes, bank collapses, and everything in between, the individual investor kept showing up with buy orders. That streak just broke in a way that has Wall Street paying attention.
Retail investors have now posted three consecutive days of net selling in US equities, something that hasn’t happened since 2020.
The numbers behind the reversal
The selling streak is notable not just for its duration but for its rarity. Scott Rubner from Citadel Securities has pointed out that retail net-selling days have occurred only 18 times since January 2020. Three of them happening back-to-back is, statistically speaking, quite unusual.
Vanda Research, which tracks retail order flow, has previously flagged moments when individual investors flipped to net sellers. One such instance came on November 23, 2023, when retail investors posted a single-day net selling figure of $20.6 million. That was treated as a noteworthy event at the time. Now we’re looking at three straight days of it.
