Nvidia was king of the retail stocks last week
JPMorgan’s weekly tally of top traded shares among the retail crowd showed the AI chipmaker retaking the top spot from Tesla.
April was a record month for retail trading activity according to JPMorgan analysts tracking the space.
A weekly update from the bank noted that retail traders bought a record $40 billion in shares last month, beating the record set in March amid ongoing and massive dip-buying.
Analysts said that retail buyers swamped the market on up and down days. For instance, they snapped up shares both on April 3, when the S&P 500 was routed by President Trump’s Rose Garden tariff announcement, as well as on April 9, when the S&P had its best day since 2020 after Trump announced a planned tariff pause.
Their top buys won’t be much of a surprise, led by Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, and Palantir.
For the record, the frenzy of activity didn’t seem to bear financial fruit. JPM analysts estimate that retail traders lost 2% in April, compared to a drop of 0.8% for the S&P 500. For the year through the end of April, retail traders were down 9%, more than double the S&P 500’s decline of 4.2%, JPM estimated.