Morgan Stanley Data Show How Retail Meme Fixation Became a Curse
- Figures suggest retail traders have fallen behind the S&P 500
- Deteriorating profit-loss could hamper retail-trader demand
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Live by the meme, and die by it. That’s the lesson from Morgan Stanley research about how quickly small-time investors went from world-beaters to also-rans in the post-pandemic stock market.
Using exchange and public price-feed data, a chart from the bank’s trading desk estimated overall gains and losses to retail traders based on their stock flows over the last two years. While individual investors were comfortably ahead of the S&P 500 for most of 2020, when speculative equities flourished, their results fell below the benchmark a few months into 2021 and remain there.