Retail faithful buys Palantir despite tumble
JPMorgan market analysts tracking activity among retail-stock traders suggest individuals have been using the early 2025 stumble in Palantir shares as a buying opportunity.
While most retail activity was, as is typical, centered on ETFs, traders were also buying single stocks to start the year, JPM analysts wrote, using z-scores to indicate the size, in terms of standard deviation, of the wave of buying and selling of individual shares:
“Inflows were mainly directed towards the Tech sector, with names such as PLTR ($457Mn) and MicroStrategy ($373Mn), while outflows were dominated by Tesla (-$907Mn, -2.1z) and Apple (-$91Mn, -1.3z). There were also above-average demand for crypto-related names such as Riot (+1.2z) and MARA Holdings (+1.2z).”
Palantir was the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year (though it was added to the index only in September). But in the opening days of 2025, its 9.8% drop has made it the second-worst stock to own. Edison International, the California utility with enormous exposure to the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires, is the worst, down 13%.
