The hottest retail investor picks
Five years ago this week, retail investors launched a meme stock craze that would go on to become a key event in modern market history. The army of online traders began by short-squeezing stocks like GameStop , a move that was later memorialized in the 2023 movie “Dumb Money.” This group also centered focus on AMC and years later moved onto a new class of meme stocks including Opendoor and Kohl’s . While the episode became a defining moment for mom-and-pop traders, it overshadowed the names they’ve bought in the biggest sums since. For years, the State Street SPDR S & P 500 Trust ETF (SPY) — a fund tracking the namesake benchmark for the U.S. market — was the most bought security on net by everyday investors annually, according to data from market research firm VandaTrack. But that changed in 2023, when Tesla eclipsed the S & P 500 fund. Tesla’s jump on the leader board reflected its rise to fame among small-scale investors: Four years earlier, it didn’t even crack the list of the 20 top stocks and ETFs. This rush also reflected Tesla’s rebound from the 2022 sell-off, with shares more than doubling in 2023. By comparison, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added just 43% that year. The electric vehicle maker’s rally has since lost steam, with shares up more than 6% over the last 12-months compared with the Nasdaq’s nearly 20% jump. Nvidia led the way in both 2024 and 2025, Vanda data shows — continuing the trend of single stocks sitting atop the charts. The artificial intelligence darling posted big gains in both years: Shares surged more than 171% and 38% in 2024 and 2025, respectively. Given its broad market relevance, the S & P 500 fund has remained among the top securities bought on net each year. Other names like Apple and Advanced Micro Devices have fallen off the list of top five over the years, replaced by stocks including Palantir . In the half decade since the meme stock craze, individual investors have become a force that their institutional counterparts can’t ignore. Blackrock estimates that retail investors now account for almost 20% of average daily flows, up from low-single digit percentages before the pandemic. Here’s the top five most bought stocks each year on net since the meme stock craze rocked Wall Street, according to Vanda. The flows are in billions of U.S. dollars:
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