Goldman Sachs flags incessant retail buying as one of the three major positives for US stock market

One increasingly prominent narrative to explain April’s V-shaped price action is that US stocks had a trust fall, and retail traders caught them.

Scan the list of top-performing stocks from the Rose Garden reciprocal tariff announcement on April 2 through Friday’s close and you’ll see no shortage of popular names, headlined by Palantir’s 29% gain over the period along with double-digit gains for the likes of Netflix and CrowdStrike.

Goldman Sachs referred to this unrelenting retail bid as one of the “three constructive dynamics that are occurring in the market right now.”

“Retail buyers haven’t blinked (and likely won’t unless you start to see unemployment rate tick higher),” Managing Director John Marshall wrote.

This cohort has become a more active part of the market during the recent rebound in major indexes.

The other two constructive factors, per Marshall, are that “earnings have been fine” (with a special shout-out to Alphabet) and that getting through earnings means corporates are poised to ramp up buybacks.

“The April to May corporate repurchase window is historically strong,” he wrote. “This two-month period is the third-best of the year with 20% of executions.”