US retail traders purchased more than $100 million in equities during the final 10 minutes of trading on Thursday, staging a late buying reversal that lowered the group’s net equity sales for the day to $151 million. The surge in activity tempered what was on track to be the worst day of selling for individual investors since the start of the 2020 pandemic, which saw a record of $502 million in net selling.
The late-day reversal followed a sharp morning rout in which retail investors net sold $379 million of single stocks by 2 p.m. ET, a figure twice as large as the worst morning in March 2020. The volatility marks a shift from a year in which the group bought more than $1T of US stocks and ETFs, though Morgan Stanley reported that retail investors also net sold an estimated $1.4B of equities on Nov 2.