GS US Equity Views — "The rise and reach of retail trading" (13 May 2026)
- Retail activity has re-accelerated with the rally: GS desk estimates show retail trading volumes up 28% since mid-April, with the retail-favorites basket (GSXURFAV) up 29%. Removal of pattern-day-trader rules is a further tailwind.
- Size vs. footprint: retail holds ~$12tn in self-directed brokerage accounts (~10% of US corporate equity cap), but accounted for ~19% of trading volumes over the last 4 quarters — below the 24% 2021 peak, above 15% a decade ago; 17% as of Q1 2026. Institutions only see a sliver directly — brokers route 87%+ of order flow to wholesalers, who internalize ~84% of it.
- Leverage: FINRA margin debt hit $1.3tn, 52% of gross customer balances — a record, though GS attributes most of the decade's rise to institutions, not retail. Retail share of volume in leveraged S&P/Nasdaq ETFs runs ~2x the unleveraged equivalents.
- Tilts: highest retail share in Consumer Discretionary & Tech; skewed to small-caps, high-volatility, high-valuation, and high-short-interest names. Retail was 13% of volume in the top 5% most-shorted stocks in 2025, up from 9% in 2019.
- Behavior in drawdowns: retail volume rises in absolute terms during selloffs, but in the 2025 and March 2026 episodes it fell as a share — retail bought rebounds more than dips. Single-stock sharp declines reliably pull in retail.
- Market impact: controlling for fundamentals, a 1 s.d. increase in retail activity maps to ~0.16 s.d. higher forward EV/sales (~half a turn), plus higher residual volatility. Crucially — high-retail stocks underperform more after earnings misses (Exhibit 24: ~-2.8pp 1-day excess return for the top retail-share decile vs. ~-1.7pp for the lowest).
Conclusion
The actionable edge is the asymmetry around catalysts. High-retail names carry a valuation premium and a fragility discount: they overshoot on the way up but punish misses harder — argues for owning these into beats only with conviction, and for the short book / put structures being disproportionately effective on the miss side. Retail's documented chase behavior (buying rebounds, not dips) means retail flow is a poor contrarian bottom signal in 2025–26 but a decent momentum confirmer. Short-interest crowding plus rising retail share is the classic squeeze setup — size shorts in high-retail, high-SI names accordingly and respect borrow. Net: treat elevated retail share as a position-sizing and volatility input, not just a sentiment curiosity — it's a measurable factor in post-earnings drift and realized vol.
Here's the GSXURFAV top 25 by YTD retail share of volume:
| Ticker | Name | Sector | Mkt cap ($bn) | YTD ret | Retail % vol | '27 sales gth | NTM EV/Sales |
| AAL | American Airlines | Industrials | 8 | -17% | 27% | 4% | 0.6x |
| NU | Nu Holdings | Financials | 73 | -21% | 21% | 21% | 4.1x |
| SOFI | SoFi Technologies | Financials | 25 | -39% | 20% | 22% | 4.0x |
| TSLA | Tesla | Cons Disc | 1,473 | -4% | 18% | 15% | 13.9x |
| APLD | Applied Digital | Info Tech | 9 | +79% | 18% | 109% | 20.6x |
| SNDK | Sandisk | Info Tech | 135 | +512% | 17% | 41% | 5.9x |
| HIMS | Hims & Hers Health | Health Care | 7 | -23% | 17% | 20% | 2.0x |
| INTC | Intel | Info Tech | 330 | +227% | 16% | 11% | 10.6x |
| PLTR | Palantir | Info Tech | 349 | -23% | 16% | 44% | 38.6x |
| MU | Micron | Info Tech | 506 | +169% | 16% | 33% | 5.7x |
| AMD | Advanced Micro Devices | Info Tech | 448 | +109% | 16% | 52% | 12.5x |
| RKLB | Rocket Lab | Industrials | 52 | +69% | 15% | 39% | 67.8x |
| F | Ford Motor | Cons Disc | 51 | -6% | 15% | -1% | 0.9x |
| NVDA | NVIDIA | Info Tech | 4,910 | +18% | 15% | 34% | 13.3x |
| HOOD | Robinhood Markets | Financials | 82 | -31% | 15% | 23% | 15.6x |
| PFE | Pfizer | Health Care | 157 | +7% | 14% | -4% | 3.3x |
| ASTS | AST SpaceMobile | Comm Services | 24 | 0% | 13% | 344% | 57.2x |
| SMCI | Super Micro Computer | Info Tech | 17 | +12% | 13% | 22% | 0.6x |
| MSTR | Strategy Inc | Info Tech | 59 | +21% | 13% | 2% | 152.0x |
| COIN | Coinbase Global | Financials | 56 | -8% | 13% | 24% | 7.8x |
| AAOI | Applied Optoelectronics | Info Tech | 12 | +440% | 12% | 169% | 8.4x |
| APP | AppLovin | Info Tech | 166 | -27% | 12% | 30% | 18.4x |
| BE | Bloom Energy | Industrials | 62 | +223% | 12% | 70% | 19.6x |
| WDC | Western Digital | Info Tech | 127 | +184% | 11% | 31% | 11.1x |
| ORCL | Oracle | Info Tech | 511 | -4% | 11% | 41% | 7.7x |