Retail traders now account for nearly 20% of average daily trading volume in U.S. equities. Before Covid the figure sat in the low single digits. Jeff Shen, co-chief investment officer and co-head of systematic active equities at BlackRock, gave CNBC that number, and it frames what the meme stock era actually left behind.
The short squeeze that sent GameStop skyrocketing came in early 2021. Five years later, CNBC reports, it has hardened into a lasting force in the market rather than a one-off spasm.
How the crowd got in
Several things arrived at once. Lockdown-era stimulus payments put cash in people’s hands. Brokers had already dropped commissions, which a few decades ago ran close to $100 a trade, and by 2020 most let customers buy fractions of a share. Social media did the coordinating, with forums such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets spreading ideas at a speed and scale nobody had seen. Keith Gill, known online as Roaring Kitty, became a focal point for a loose community that traded on shared research and a deep distrust of Wall Street orthodoxy.
Many expected the crowd to drift away once normal life resumed. Steve Quirk, chief brokerage officer at Robinhood Markets, said he did too. “What surprised me a little bit is how strongly it’s continued,” he said. On busy days, Quirk noted, retail share of equity volume can climb close to 40%, and on the options side as high as 50%.
The numbers since
JPMorgan found that retail flows hit fresh records in 2025. Inflows jumped nearly 60% from the year before and ran about 17% above the 2021 peak, when meme trading was at its height.
Tom Lee of Fundstrat reads that as a good sign. “When they were buying dips, I knew the bull market was healthy,” he said. Retail buyers stepped in during the tariff-driven sell-off in early April last year and rushed into the SPDR Gold Shares fund, and the returns got Wall Street’s attention. In 2026 they have moved on to energy stocks after the U.S. strike on Venezuela, and to silver, which passed $100 per ounce for the first time the week before CNBC published.
The meme label has not gone away either. Opendoor and Kohl’s emerged as a new class of meme stocks in 2025, and demand for options and leveraged funds has boomed. Douglas Yones, CEO of Direxion, said his firm’s research shows small investors typically put only a small slice of their portfolios into those risky instruments and keep most of their money in traditional holdings.
Professionals adjust
Hedge funds learned the hard way. Crowded bearish bets now carry more risk when retail traders can pile in quickly, and many funds have cut back short exposure, diversified and spent heavily on tracking retail sentiment so they do not become targets. “To many professional investors, retail traders have become that annoying TV-series villain who never quite gets written out,” said Ivan Ćosović, founder of Breakout Point, which follows retail activity on discussion boards.
JJ Kinahan of Cboe Global Markets put it more warmly. “Professionals learned a lesson from the tenaciousness of the retail investors who believe in companies and continue to buy them,” he said.
Lee is betting the group gets bigger. Roughly 76% of household wealth is held by people over 60, he told CNBC, and about $120 trillion is set to pass to millennials and Gen Z over the next 20 years.
