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it’s so over

Retail traders are “skipping the dips” to dash for cash and bet against tech stocks

The speculative fever that dominated markets for much of 2025 looks to have broken.

4/2/26 9:26AM

Amid recent market turbulence, retail traders are “skipping the dips, selling into rallies, and positioning more defensively,” writes JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain.

Retail purchases in March were roughly cut in half from January and down 40% from February, per JPMorgan.

And still those headline stats understate how cautious the cohort has been of late.

For instance, two products that the retail community stampeded into on Tuesday and Wednesday were the ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ ETF (3x leveraged short the Nasdaq 100) and the iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF (cash, more or less), according to Jain.

In single stocks, Tesla, Nvidia, and Microsoft continue to be bought, but tech more broadly is being sold, with retail positioning in the sector “at its most negative level in six months,” Jain wrote. In particular, Micron and Sandisk have been dumped across the past week on concerns over Google’s TurboQuant algorithm.

Jain’s spotlighting of the newfound risk aversion among retail investors comes roughly a week after Vanda Research said that retail traders had a session in which they sold single stocks, on net, for the first time since November 2023.

Zooming out, the speculative fever that dominated price action for much of 2025 looks to have broken. Call volumes traded across US exchanges (which we highlighted as a key chart to watch for 2026) peaked in October.

That’s also when the Invesco QQQ Trust, Nvidia, Bitcoin, quantum computing stocks, and Goldman Sachs’ basket of stocks beloved by retail traders hit all-time closing (or 52-week) highs. (Palantir peaked in early November.)

It will come as absolutely no surprise that another name that reached its zenith along with speculative stocks and bitcoin, the ultimate no-fundamentals asset, is Robinhood Markets, a brokerage that’s become synonymous with retail activity.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

The put/call ratio suggests bearish activity is now dominant, a rarity over the past six months.

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SpaceX received more than a dozen positive analyst calls on Tuesday — including from major Wall Street banks — as they initiate coverage on Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

SpaceX went public on June 12 at a $2.2 trillion valuation, the largest debut in history. While the company hasn’t yet posted a profit, it seems to have convinced Wall Street that it will get there and grow its valuation on the way.

Of the at least 17 analysts that gave a rating on Tuesday, all but one gave it a “buy” or “outperform” rating. MoffettNathanson was "neutral."

The ratings come as SpaceX joined the Nasdaq 100 index, a benchmark tech-heavy basket of companies that underpins millions of portfolios. The inclusion adds built-in demand for the stock from index funds and ETFs.

Still, SpaceX fell more than 5% on Tuesday amid a broader sell-off, and is currently effectively flat from its opening price of $150 a share.

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Nike sinks to lowest level since 2014 after warning of “challenged” sales environment in Q4 report

Did Nike do it?

Investors had a mixed reaction after the global sports apparel company reported its fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday after the bell. Shares initially rose 5% as Nike beat out Wall Street expectations amid a hefty tariff refund bonus. However, the stock then sank to its lowest level since August 2014 in postmarket trading.

Here are the Q4 numbers:

Revenue of $11.0 billion (estimate: $10.8 billion).
Adjusted earnings per share of $0.20 (estimate: $0.12).

Ahead of this report, Nike warned that results would be flattered by a one-time tariff refund (now estimated at roughly $0.52 per share for the bottom line). That gave the company an extra cushion in snapping its streak of seven quarters of year-over-year profit declines.

Over the past year, the company had been punished by tariffs on imported goods, stagnant consumer spending, and increasing competition from other footwear brands like New Balance, Adidas, and Hoka.

Outgoing CFO Matthew Friend deemed it an “increasingly challenging operating environment, where sell-through remains challenged.”

Retail traders are “skipping the dips” to dash for cash and bet against tech stocks

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