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Retail traders are “skipping the dips” to dash for cash and bet against tech stocks

The speculative fever that dominated markets for much of 2025 looks to have broken.

Amid recent market turbulence, retail traders are “skipping the dips, selling into rallies, and positioning more defensively,” writes JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain.

Retail purchases in March were roughly cut in half from January and down 40% from February, per JPMorgan.

And still those headline stats understate how cautious the cohort has been of late.

For instance, two products that the retail community stampeded into on Tuesday and Wednesday were the ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ ETF (3x leveraged short the Nasdaq 100) and the iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF (cash, more or less), according to Jain.

Retail purchases JPMorgan
JPMorgan

In single stocks, Tesla, Nvidia, and Microsoft continue to be bought, but tech more broadly is being sold, with retail positioning in the sector “at its most negative level in six months,” Jain wrote. In particular, Micron and Sandisk have been dumped across the past week on concerns over Google’s TurboQuant algorithm.

Jain’s spotlighting of the newfound risk aversion among retail investors comes roughly a week after Vanda Research said that retail traders had a session in which they sold single stocks, on net, for the first time since November 2023.

Zooming out, the speculative fever that dominated price action for much of 2025 looks to have broken. Call volumes traded across US exchanges (which we highlighted as a key chart to watch for 2026) peaked in October.

That’s also when the Invesco QQQ Trust, Nvidia, bitcoin, quantum computing stocks, and Goldman Sachs’ basket of stocks beloved by retail traders hit all-time closing (or 52-week) highs. (Palantir peaked in early November.)

It will come as absolutely no surprise that another name that reached its zenith along with speculative stocks and bitcoin, the ultimate no-fundamentals asset, is Robinhood Markets, a brokerage that’s become synonymous with retail activity.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

The put/call ratio suggests bearish activity is now dominant, a rarity over the past six months.

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Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

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Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1, short of expectations

Ahead of its first-quarter earnings later this month, Tesla on Thursday announced that it delivered 358,023 vehicles in the quarter.

Analysts polled by FactSet had expected 380,500 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter this year, while Tesla last month released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate — something it began in the fourth quarter of 2025 — of 365,645 vehicles.

Shares extended losses in premarket trading on Thursday, falling more than 4%.

The figure is still up from the same quarter last year, when Tesla delivered fewer than 337,000 vehicles amid intensifying competition in China and flailing public perception over CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Trump administration.

As of 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday, event contract odds held a slightly less optimistic view than the broader analyst community, but a sunnier view than the figure Tesla put forward. 52% of traders predicted Tesla’s Q1 deliveries would come in at more than 360,000, 40% thought the figure would be higher than 370,000, and 15% estimated it would be higher than 380,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

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Globalstar surges after FT reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite group

Globalstar is up 11% in premarket trading on Thursday on reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite company, in a push to take on Elon Musks SpaceX. The two companies are currently negotiating the details of a potential deal after lengthy talks, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Amazon has ambitions to compete with SpaceX to provide satellite-based internet access anywhere on the planet — a market thats dominated by Starlink at the moment and a key pillar of the eye-watering $1 trillion valuation that SpaceX is seeking in its IPO, which it has just confidentially filed for.

Indeed, Amazon has been signing deals with airlines and doubling down on investing in its internet constellation lately, with plans to increase its ~200 satellites in orbit to about 700 by the middle of 2026 — still a fraction compared to SpaceX’s mega constellation, which has some 10,000 active satellites.

But Amazon’s not the only Big Tech giant with an interest in Globalstar. Back in 2024, Apple invested $1.5 billion for a 20% stake in the company, necessitating a negotiation between Apple and Amazon for the latest deal talks to proceed, per the FT. SpaceX also reportedly had early talks with Globalstar, Bloomberg reported last October.

Globalstars stock has been up ~230% in the past year, pushing its value to some $8.8 billion as of yesterday’s close.

Amazon has ambitions to compete with SpaceX to provide satellite-based internet access anywhere on the planet — a market thats dominated by Starlink at the moment and a key pillar of the eye-watering $1 trillion valuation that SpaceX is seeking in its IPO, which it has just confidentially filed for.

Indeed, Amazon has been signing deals with airlines and doubling down on investing in its internet constellation lately, with plans to increase its ~200 satellites in orbit to about 700 by the middle of 2026 — still a fraction compared to SpaceX’s mega constellation, which has some 10,000 active satellites.

But Amazon’s not the only Big Tech giant with an interest in Globalstar. Back in 2024, Apple invested $1.5 billion for a 20% stake in the company, necessitating a negotiation between Apple and Amazon for the latest deal talks to proceed, per the FT. SpaceX also reportedly had early talks with Globalstar, Bloomberg reported last October.

Globalstars stock has been up ~230% in the past year, pushing its value to some $8.8 billion as of yesterday’s close.

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FDA clarifies stricter stance on GLP-1 compounding: Reuters

The Food and Drug Administration reiterated its increasingly strict stance on compounded versions of GLP-1s, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The FDA said that outside of drug shortages, “routine production” of copycat drugs is not allowed. Producing the compounded versions could now “prompt enforcement action,” Reuters reported.

Hims & Hers, which has historically been one of the largest sellers of copycat GLP-1s, fell more than 4% on Wednesday and slipped further in premarket trading on Thursday.

Hims attracted FDA scrutiny in February when it launched a copy of Novo Nordisk’s new GLP-1 pill. At the time, the FDA said it would take “decisive steps” to restrict GLP-1 compounding in a statement that specifically called out Hims.

After a bitter spat with Novo, which makes Ozempic and Wegovy, Hims entered a pact with the drugmaker in which it agreed not to market compounded GLP-1s.

Hims & Hers, which has historically been one of the largest sellers of copycat GLP-1s, fell more than 4% on Wednesday and slipped further in premarket trading on Thursday.

Hims attracted FDA scrutiny in February when it launched a copy of Novo Nordisk’s new GLP-1 pill. At the time, the FDA said it would take “decisive steps” to restrict GLP-1 compounding in a statement that specifically called out Hims.

After a bitter spat with Novo, which makes Ozempic and Wegovy, Hims entered a pact with the drugmaker in which it agreed not to market compounded GLP-1s.

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC. Futures and event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC.