Move Over, Meme Stocks: Retail Investors Go Back to the Blue Chips

This chart shows the 10 US-listed stocks and ETFs with the largest monthly net purchases by global retail investors. Net purchases are calculated by taking the dollar value of purchases and subtracting the dollar value of sales.

For much of the past two years, the first place is divided by two broad-based ETFs. But for 10 months in the middle, Apple, the largest US company by market value, swapped leadership with the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer NIO.

NIO was one of many EV and EV related companies that attracted individual investors, a list that also included Tesla, Plug power and lucid. Tesla appeared in the top-10 list both before and ever since it was added to the S&P 500 in December 2020.

GameStop has only cracked the top 10 once in the past two years. That was in January 2021, when retail investors netted $410 million of the stock. Shares of the video game retailer rose from less than $19 at the end of 2020 to $325 a month later — a gain of 1.625%.

cinema chain AMC entertainmentAnother favorite of investors who spent time on social media forums, was a popular play in the spring and summer of 2021.

The aviation and cruise industries were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Retail investors tried to buy the dip. In April 2020, they piled up in shares of Delta Airlines, United Airlines, US Airlines and Carnival.

This year until January 27th, the top two places are again in the hands of ETFs, while large-cap regulars Apple and Advanced micro-devices are also in the top five. If the current trend continues, it will be the first month since June 2020 that the top 10 net purchases do not contain any non-S&P 500 stocks.