From Euphoria To Panic: Retail Investors Fled Stocks In February
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Mon, 03/05/2018
Over the weekend, we reported that after looking at the recent violent reversal in ETF flows, which resulted in the biggest outflow from equity ETFs since the Feb 5 Quant Crash, JPM was getting concerned that retail investors are no longer “buying the dip.”
As JPM wrote “the potential withdrawal of retail investors as the marginal buyer of equities could create clear downside risk for equity markets for the near term – especially after buying an unprecedented $100bn of equity ETFs in only one month during January.” Incidentally, the January inflow coincided with what many dubbed the market’s blow-off top, or mania, phase.
We now have confirmation that JPM was right because according to TD Ameritrade, in February euphoria turned to panic as mom and pop investors ran for cover from tumbling stocks at the fastest pace since at least 2010.
As shown in the chart below, TD Ameritrade’s Investor Movement Index (IMX) tumbled to a reading of 5.95 last month from 7.79 in January, a plunge of 23%, the largest monthly decline since TD Ameritrade started tracking the figures in 2010, according to a press release. This was also the second straight loss for the gauge, which fell 9 percent in January.
The Rest…HERE
