#retail-trading

#retail-trading

In early 2021, an army of retail traders made massive bets on meme stocks and briefly melted down the market. Trading volume swelled to such a huge extent that popular brokerage Robinhood had to halt buy orders for stocks like GameStop for a few days in order to escape a liquidity crisis. At the time, the situation led to claims of a conspiracy, but the reason for the meltdown was more mundane: Wall Street's creaky infrastructure could not settle trades fast enough.

As the bull market looks to extend into year's end, thanks in part to increased liquidity and more enthusiasm to participate in the so-called AI boom (and the rise of agentic AI), some of the heated fintech firms may be worth consideration as they come in. At the time of writing, shares of HOOD have dipped over 6% while BULL shares are now in correction territory after experiencing an explosive upside surge during the early months of summer.

Retail-driven speculative behavior no longer signals generational angst or post-pandemic distortion. It has instead become a settled feature of the current cycle.