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Retail traders sold more stocks than they bought for the first time since 2023

Monday was the first day since November 2023 where retail investors flipped to selling.

Although Tuesday’s reports of President Trump proposing a 15-point plan to end the war with Iran might be seeing oil prices slip and equities nudge up a little today, retail traders weren’t feeling so optimistic at the start of the week.

On Monday, retail investors sold $20.6 million worth of shares, marking the first day the cohort sold more single stocks than they bought since November 2023, according to a Tuesday note from Vanda Research. Still, even before the president’s reported plan, there were signs of dip-buying and a return to previous norms by Tuesday afternoon, the firm noted.

"On a broader basis, the trend since the start of March has been one of gradually receding retail participation, alongside systematic deleveraging and only modest buying from long-only and hedge fund investors on the other side," analysts said in a note.

Screenshot 2026-03-25 at 10.07.03 AM — (Vanda Research)

It is not the first sign that the war has taken a toll on retail investors. Earlier this month, JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain noted that retail investors are showing “retail investors are showing persistent signs of weakness.”

Retail traders crushed it last year, in large part because of AI-related trades. Their trading preferences this year remain largely the same, Jain said, with the pullback more down to dumping energy stocks than tech darlings.

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J. Edward Moreno51m

Arm says its in-house AI chip will generate billions in revenue

British semiconductor firm Arm rose more than 13% in premarket trading after it announced Tuesday evening that it would create a new AI chip in partnership with Meta, which its CEO says should lead to a boom in sales.

Speaking at an event in San Francisco, Arm CEO Rene Haas said the new chip alone is expected to generate $15 billion in annual revenue by 2031. Meanwhile, the CEO said that the company expects intellectual property sales, currently its main revenue driver, to hit $10 billion by then.

In total, Arm projects it will hit $25 billion in annual sales in five years, compared to the $4.9 billion analysts expect it to report for its current fiscal year, which ends this month. It also expects to report $9 earnings per share by then, compared to the $1.75 the Street is penciling in for FY2026.

Meta and Arm team up to build a new class of data center chips

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Oil drops, yields fall, and stocks rise on reports the US has sent Iran a plan to end war

Oil, stock, and bond markets flipped their positions yesterday and continued into premarket trading Wednesday, as investors digest the latest reports on a potential wind-down of the war in Iran, with The New York Times reporting that the US has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the conflict.

While the details of the proposal remain unclear, it reportedly includes US demands from prior nuclear talks in Geneva and has been shared with Israel — though Israeli officials remain skeptical that Iran will agree to all conditions, according to Axios.

At the time of writing, international benchmark Brent crude futures are down around 4% to ~$100 a barrel, while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures also sank roughly to $88 a barrel. Yields on two-year and 10-year Treasuries continued their overnight declines and theSPDR S&P 500 ETF extended its after-hours rally into premarket trading.

Global markets have breathed a sigh of relief, with the broader Stoxx Europe 600 up 1.3% and all sectors (besides oil and gas stocks) in the green. Asia-Pacific markets closed higher Wednesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi gaining 2.9% and 1.6%, respectively. S&P 500 futures rose 0.84% and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 1%.

Spot gold and silver both jumped roughly 1.8% as the decline in oil prices eased inflation fears.

From the Times’ report yesterday:

“The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout.

It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal.

But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries.”

Some individual shares had outsized reactions to the news. Gold miners Freeport-McMoRan and Newmont, which have been battered since the war started, are still rising this morning. Ammonia maker CF Industries — which had risen on expectations of rising prices for fertilizer products linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — is going the other way.

US natural gas producers such as APA Corporation, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy declined after-hours on the news.

United States Said to Have Sent Iran a Plan to End the Middle East War

Spot gold and silver both jumped roughly 1.8% as the decline in oil prices eased inflation fears.

From the Times’ report yesterday:

“The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout.

It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal.

But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries.”

US natural gas producers such as APA Corporation, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy declined after-hours on the news.

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Stocks close lower after fluctuating as traders digest war updates

Stocks pared steeper losses on hopes of US-Iran talks, but were unable to maintain gains on reports that the US is deploying 3,000 troops to the Middle East.

Matt Phillips18h

Amid Mideast conflict, investors cling to faith in the AI build-out

Data center build-out stocks showed impressive resilience to the slump that hit big indexes Tuesday.

In fact, construction companies, server system makers, fiber-optic technology stocks, and memory makers — all cornerstones of the AI trade — were having a pretty good day, suggesting the market sees the wave of AI construction continuing, war or no war.

Optical stocks seen as crucial to efficiently transmitting the flood of information AI data centers both produce and depend on were surging. Corning, Lumentum, Coherent, and Ciena Corp. ramped.

Server rack makers HP Enterprise and Dell jumped. Construction and engineering companies like Sterling Infrastructure, MasTec, and Comfort Systems USA, which have benefited from the growth in building data centers, posted solid gains.

Hard disk drive makers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital were also positive, though other memory plays such as Sandisk and Micron were in the red.

It was an impressive display of positivity on a day when the S&P 500 (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and the Nasdaq 100 (Invesco QQQ Trust) were both fluttering between positive and negative territory for completely understandable reasons.

After all, the 82nd Airborne is heading to the Middle East, suggesting the US is considering sending troops into Iran. US crude oil is back above $90 a barrel and climbing, as the Strait of Hormuz remains essentially shut.

Additionally, the problems in the private credit market continue, with major fund managers preventing investors from withdrawing all the money they would like to. We even had a weak auction for US two-year Treasury notes — investors seemed to think the offered yield might not be sufficient to offset inflation risks stirred up by the war — that sent short-term interest rates up sharply.

But apparently it will take more than all that for investors to worry that the AI build-out may be halted, delayed, or even just trimmed back.

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