By Anita Hamilton
President Donald Trump says the U.S. has already won the Iran war, but ongoing attacks coupled with the planned mobilization of thousands of U.S. troops to the region has everyday investors feeling more cautious than ever.
Noninstitutional stock buyers are putting 70% less money into the market than they did before the conflict began, according to J.P. Morgan's report on retail trading for the week ending Wednesday, March 25.
Total flows fell to $3 billion this week, well below the $6.8 billion average over the past year. Retail purchases of single stocks over the past week are the lowest they have been since December.
The decline was particularly notable on Monday, when people actually sold more individual stocks than they bought. "Despite a broader return to market enthusiasm, retail appeared to capitulate -- turning net sellers for the first time in 9 months," the analysts wrote.
While people continued to buy Magnificent 7 stocks at "moderate levels" for the week, they were light on most sectors, especially energy, other tech stocks, and industrials.
Among the top five stocks that people sold, AMD saw the biggest outflows of $153 million, even as its stock price rose more than 10% during the same period, according to FactSet. That rise was driven largely by an unconfirmed report from Nikkei Asia that the chip maker was planning to raise prices.
The second biggest loser was server and artificial-intelligence firm Super Micro, whose co-founder Wally Liaw is facing charges of export-control violations. That news helped spur retail outflows of some $121 million for the week. Exxon, Amazon, and Circle Internet Group also saw relatively large outflows of $116 million, $91 million, and $90 million, respectively.
It wasn't all doom and gloom, though. People poured into big tech, with Nvidia seeing the biggest inflows of $492 million. While that's down from last week's $887 million, it still led all other individual stocks. People also snapped up Micron, Tesla, Microsoft, and ASML to the tune of $259 million, $192 million, $101 million, and $72 million, respectively.
Write to Anita Hamilton at anita.hamilton@barrons.com
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March 26, 2026 12:44 ET (16:44 GMT)
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