USFR

By Joseph Adinolfi

Some see another buying opportunity. Others fear the worst isn't over. A market rout is testing the instincts of a generation raised on quick rebounds.

Retail investors dumped stocks on Thursday at one of the highest rates since the COVID crash.

As stocks plunged Thursday, some younger investors saw an opportunity to buy. Others weren't so sure the worst was over.

For investors who got their start during the pandemic, sharp selloffs can resurface memories of the spectacular rebound that followed the COVID-era crash. But Thursday's rout was testing just how eager they were to buy the dip.

The mixed reactions came as Vanda Research, which monitors activity from individual retail investors, reported that individual stock sales from this group hit one of the highest levels since March 2020.

But in interviews with MarketWatch and posts on social media, some younger investors said they were relishing yet another opportunity to buy the dip.

Matt Cerminaro, the 27-year-old founder of Exhibit A, a content platform for financial advisers, told MarketWatch he was heavily buying shares of the Invesco QQQ Trust Series I QQQ on Thursday.

"When I see a bunch of red on the screen, I have this instant feeling to buy the dip," Cerminaro told MarketWatch. "It's difficult, but I also find it exciting." He said he suspects many younger investors - particularly millennials and members of Generation Z - were likely doing the same.

"We first started during the COVID era, so when we see the market down 5% in a day, a lot of us remember what it was like to buy stocks in mid-March 2020, and wake up three weeks later to see our accounts up 25%," he noted.

Cerminaro, who makes stock-market charts for a living, pointed out that in the stock market, big down days and big up days often cluster together. "That's just what the data show, and I'd rather be a buyer in that case," he said.

Blake Werner, a 21-year-old student at the University of Arkansas, also sees an opportunity to buy coming - if not just yet.

"I think the market is reacting to a few comments from newly elected officials about AI, which caused a huge drop in those names and is, quite frankly, scary," Werner told MarketWatch. "I'm not buying much yet, but I'm targeting early next week for a few entries. I don't think the selloff is done yet."

Christopher Matlack, 36, a software quality-assurance engineer in Fairfield, Conn., told MarketWatch that he trimmed his stock holdings months ago. He is staying on the sidelines for now and waiting to see how things shake out.

"I mean, the writing has been on the wall for a while now, and anyone up on the macro environment should have seen we were heading for a perfect storm," Matlack told MarketWatch.

Wesley Ruede, a store manager and retail investor who lives in Yonkers, N.Y., said he doesn't believe this marks the end of the AI trade - as at least one high-profile independent research shop has claimed.

"I don't see today as 'AI is over'. I think investors are just beginning to reprice what the transition actually costs, how financially circular parts of the buildout have become, and how much political resistance the physical infrastructure side may now face," Ruede said.

He added that he is sitting tight for now - neither buying, nor selling, for his portfolio.

A rare buyers strike

Vanda noted the heavy pace of selling in commentary shared with MarketWatch on Thursday afternoon. By the time the closing bell rang, retail investors had already sold a net $257 million in single stocks - the third-largest one-day outflow since March 2020.

"On a typical selloff, retail buy the dip. Today, that bid has effectively disappeared from individual names," wrote Vanda's Viraj Patel in commentary shared with MarketWatch. He warned that investors were facing a rare buyers strike as demand for stocks ebbed.

"Institutional investors have stepped back just as retail and systematic are selling aggressively. These are the kind of flow dynamics we rarely see outside periods of genuine market stress," Patel wrote.

Meanwhile, the mood on r/WallStreetBets, a popular Reddit (RDDT) subreddit that helped give birth to today's "degen" trading culture, was decidedly mixed. In a daily discussion chat near the top of the page, some investors speculated that Thursday was looking like a good time to buy call options, which would deliver a payoff if the market swiftly rebounds.

Others were sounding much more gloomy.

"The bubble hasn't even popped yet, this is just the appetizer," one user wrote.

U.S. stocks finished sharply lower on Thursday, as the Nasdaq Composite COMP fell by more than 5%. The Nasdaq, S&P 500 SPX and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA each recorded their largest one-day percentage-point declines since April 4, 2025, when markets were reeling from President Trump's "liberation day" tariffs.

-Joseph Adinolfi

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-05-26 1644ET