Who’s right—Main Street or Wall Street? Just as stock markets have come under pressure and professional traders on Wall Street—from Goldman Sachs to Citigroup—have begun to take a more cautious, if not bearish, view, retail investors appear to be growing ever more optimistic.
In its quarterly Modern Investor Pulse, published Thursday, investment platform Finimize—which has 1 million members across its app, newsletter, and website—found American retail investors taking a bullish stance.
A full 84% said they planned to invest the same or more than they did in the previous quarter, and two-thirds said they believed equities would rally over the next year.
The poll, which had 1,453 U.S.-based respondents among 4,088 retail investors surveyed from around the world, was carried out between Sept. 13 and Sept. 15.
Almost three in four American retail investors told Finimize they were planning to take either the same or more risk with their investments over the coming three months, with 60% planning to invest in stocks and 40% planning to put money into exchange traded funds (ETFs).
The majority of the U.S.-based investors who participated in Finimize’s study said they had thousands of dollars to invest in assets over the next 12 months, with two-thirds saying they had between $5,000 and $100,000 to invest over the coming year. Almost 14% said they were planning to invest more than $100,000 in the same period.
Global optimism on stocks
It wasn’t just America’s amateur investors who seemed optimistic in Finimize’s poll. Sixty-seven percent of the survey’s global respondents said they thought stocks would be valued higher this time next year.
A separate study published Wednesday by investment platform eToro found that although retail investors were becoming increasingly concerned about the prospect of a recession, the potential threat was not dampening sentiment.
The eToro survey, which polled 10,000 retail investors in 13 countries toward the end of August, found that investor confidence had risen over the summer, despite markets seeing some volatility last month. The proportion of retail investors who told the company they felt confident in their portfolio jumped to 78% from 71% in June.
At the same time, more than one in five said they saw a potential recession as the biggest risk to their investments—almost double the amount who had said the same in eToro’s June survey.
One in three retail investors who participated in the poll said they planned to increase their regular contributions to their investment portfolios over the next three months, with investors more likely to pour money into tech stocks—usually considered high-risk investments—in the fourth quarter than any other sector.
A third survey published recently, by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), found that retail investors were beginning to feel bullish about stocks again.
The pros are cautious
While Finimize, the AAII, and eToro’s findings suggest optimism among retail investors, some institutional investors have become more wary in recent weeks.
Stocks have suffered a turbulent September, with the S&P 500 shedding around 5% since the start of the month. Some calculations suggest that the S&P 500 is headed below 3,000 points—which would be a 30% decline from current levels.
Bank of America said last week that investors were dumping stocks at the fastest rate since the end of 2022, when shares rounded off their worst year since the financial crisis, as many felt the prospect of higher-for-longer rates raised the risk of a recession.
Wall Street bulls Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, meanwhile, have lowered their year-end price targets for the S&P 500 index.
According to Bank of America’s most recent Global Fund Manager Survey—which was published earlier this month and polled 222 respondents who collectively manage assets worth $616 billion—institutional investors are not quite “extremely bearish,” but they aren’t feeling bullish either.
“Our broadest measure of [fund manager] sentiment, based on cash positions, equity allocation, and economic growth expectations, fell slightly…indicating investors are still bearish,” BofA analysts said in the report.
A third of those surveyed by BofA said they were taking lower-than-normal risk levels. Fund managers were taking money out of tech stocks, BofA said—contrasting with the decisions investors said they were making in eToro’s recent poll.
Meanwhile, a Goldman Sachs report published this week revealed that hedge funds were making more bearish bets on stocks in recent weeks, with the lender saying its clients were adding short positions and selling off consumer discretionary, industrials and financials stocks.
Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s top strategist, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that his team was 5% underweight on equities and was positioning its portfolio defensively.
Short vs. long term
In a call with Fortune on Wednesday, Max Rofagha, founder and CEO of Finimize, said the platform’s data suggested retail investors are generally more optimistic than professionals.
“If you’re a professional investor, you’re typically managing someone else’s money, and you need to post reports every quarter—ultimately, by default, you must then take a slightly more short-term view on things,” he said. “Whereas if you’re a retail investor, you can genuinely take a long-term view, like 10 years plus, if you fundamentally believe in a thesis that you have.”
He added that Finimize’s findings suggest retail investors understand the risks involved with the stock market but feel confident in their long-term positions.
“From the results we’ve been tracking over the last couple of quarters, people really do understand that they need to have a diversified portfolio, but they also understand that a small proportion of their portfolio can be these bigger bets, or these trends that they that they want to pursue,” he explained. “I think it’s really a question of timeline and of proper diversification, and if those two things are properly put in place, then I do think that retail investors have a chance to be quite successful.”
