JPMorgan Says Retail Investors Are Finally Bailing on Stocks

In the options market, bearish puts are in vogue, a departure from last year, when bullish calls were sought frenetically for quick profits.

It’s not hard to see why amateurs are finally giving up.

With the S&P 500 dropping as much as 23% from its peak and the Nasdaq 100 down more than 30%, the gains that newbie traders once took pride in are quickly evaporating.

As of June 13, all their trading profits made during the meme-stock era had been wiped out, JPMorgan estimated.

“They were a significant driver of the inflated valuations we saw in tech and crypto,” said Michael Wang, chief executive officer at Prometheus Alternative Investments. “The reality is retail tends to buy the most at the top and the least at the bottom. We’ve seen this before in pretty much every market cycle, including the dot-com crash.”

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