Following institutions and hedge funds, individual investors' buying of stocks has significantly slowed down Over the past month, retail investors in the United States have net bought about $13 billion in US stocks, which has fallen to the lowest level since 2020. Compared to early 2026, it has decreased by $18 billion, a decrease of 58%. The cooling of individual stocks is more pronounced, with monthly net purchases remaining at only $3.2 billion, a decrease of 71% from the beginning of the year. Roughly calculated based on the total net purchases minus the net purchases of individual stocks, the remaining approximately 9.8 billion US dollars have flowed into ETFs. This means that currently, about three-quarters of retail net purchases come from ETFs, and there are very few funds available to directly bet on individual stocks. But the total transaction volume of individual investors has risen to a record high of $500 billion, doubling compared to mid-2024. Based on this data, for every $100 transaction generated, the resulting net buy is only about $2.6. This indicates that although retail investors appear to trade every day, they quickly sell after buying, offsetting most of their buying with take profit, stop loss, position switching, or short-term operations. The account appears to be very active, but there are fewer and fewer new funds left in the market to bear long-term risks. To put it simply, retail investors are currently more focused on short-term operations and are less willing to bear long-term risks. To put it another way, retail investors are starting to worry and fear. I have written before that in the past few years, whenever there has been a significant adjustment in the index or technology stocks, retail investors usually quickly buy in, providing a stable layer of support to the market. Currently, retail investors are still buying at the bottom, but it seems that they are also selling their existing positions, leaving only a small portion of the net funds they used to have. This way, even if the stock price rebounds after falling, it is more likely to become short-term trading, making it difficult to form a sustained capital push for several weeks. The net buying of a single stock decreased by 71%, indicating that retail investors' willingness to bear individual stock risks is also weakening. When financial reports fall short of expectations, valuations are too high, or institutions begin to reduce their holdings, popular technology stocks and high volatility stocks will receive less retail investment than in the past. Previously, when the market fell, it was likely to be quickly taken over by someone, but now it is more likely to experience a continuous decline, and after a rebound, there will also be a large number of selling orders. More funds are staying in ETFs, which also indicates that retail investors are reducing their bets on specific companies. But we still need to observe whether these fund flows have entered broad-based indices, industry ETFs, triple leverage, and single stock ETFs. The increase in the proportion of broad-based ETFs indicates a decrease in risk appetite, while the increase in the proportion of leveraged ETFs suggests that market volatility may increase. Of course, this set of data does not yet represent retail investors panicking and leaving, as the overall net buying is still positive and the total transaction volume is at a historical high. It only represents that retail investors have entered a high-frequency turnover stage from continuous increase in positions, and the new funds provided to the market are rapidly decreasing. Retail investors have not completely exited the market, but are increasingly unwilling to keep their money in the market for the long term. The more lively the transaction, the lower the net buying, indicating that the patience and confidence of the funds are declining. @Gate Crypto、 US stocks, Hong Kong stocks, South Korean stocks, gold CFD、 Predicting one-stop trading in the market