Disproportionate Influence of Retail Investors?

How can the retail trader tail wag the market dog? In their February 2021 paper entitled “The Equity Market Implications of the Retail Investment Boom”, Philippe van der Beck and Coralie Jaunin quantify impacts of the Robinhood-catalyzed retail trading boom on the U.S. stock market. They focus on the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which retail trading soars and institutional investors rebalance their portfolios. They approximate retail trading based on account holdings data from RobinTrack and institutional rebalancing based on SEC Form 13F filings. Using RobinTrack account U.S. common stock holdings data as available through the first half of 2020 (discontinued August 2020) and institutional common stock holdings as disclosed in 13F filings during January 2005 through June 2020, they find that: (more…)