- Stocks have been on a wild ride since President Donald Trump announced a slate of tariffs on April 2.
- In the four-session stretch ending Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 4,500 points, while the S&P 500 lost 12%.
- Retail investors have swooped in to snap up stocks at depressed values, pointing to a buying opportunity as the major averages slid.
While Wall Street spent the past week sweating over whether President Donald Trump’s now-altered tariff plan would push the economy into a recession or ignite a bear market, Rachel Hazit knew exactly what to do.
The Philadelphia-based marketer used cash she had on the sidelines to buy equities like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) and the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM) last week. After learning about investing last year, the 32-year-old felt like she was seeing her first big drop in the market as someone with skin in the game.
“I see this time now as an opportunity,” Hazit said in an interview with CNBC this week. When the market declined last week, she remembers thinking: “This is on sale.”
Hazit’s investments are part of a flood of money totaling billions of dollars from everyday investors who have entered the stock market in recent days. These retail traders appear to following the conventional market wisdom of “buying the dip,” which refers to a strategy of purchasing stocks when they decline because they’re considered discounted.
Trump’s April 2 announcement of broad and steep tariffs sent the stock market reeling as investors feared the taxes on imports would hamstring consumer spending and drive up inflation. Several Wall Street strategists cut their outlooks for the S&P 500, a benchmark index of the largest public companies in the U.S., while multiple economists for these firms hiked the likelihood for a recession.
That all came to a head exactly one week later: Trump on Wednesday rolled back most of his planned levies, citing investor fears as one driver of the decision. An afternoon rally following the news pushed the S&P 500 up more than 9% in the session, marking its best day since 2008.
Institutional investors ran for the hills during that week, causing the S&P 500 to briefly dip into bear market territory, which refers to a 20% drop from recent highs. But data from market insights firm Vanda Research, a trusted authority on retail investor trends, showed mom-and-pop traders like Hazit doing the exact opposite.
“What marks an equity drawdown? It’s usually retail capitulation as the final shoe to drop,” said Marco Iachini, vice president of research at Vanda. “We’re clearly not seeing that.”
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/10/retail-investors-are-running-head-first-into-this-topsy-turvy-market.html