"Individual investors have been snapping up stocks at the fastest pace on record"
By Elliott Wave International
More than 20 years ago, when I was working for another company, I remember hearing a colleague say that he doesn't look at his monthly 401k statements.
The implication was clear: He couldn't bear to see the losses. At the time, the stock market was in a big downtrend after the dot.com bust.
I was reminded of what my former colleague said when I saw this Feb. 23 CNBC headline:
Retirees lost 23% of their 401(k) savings in 2022, Fidelity says
The S&P 500 index surrendered nearly 20% in 2022. As for bonds, another CNBC headline noted (Jan. 7):
2022 was the worst-ever year for U.S. bonds.
So, no doubt, there's been a lot of pained looks on the faces of 401k participants as they've reviewed their statements during the past some months.
Even so, read this from Yahoo! News (Feb. 16):
Individual investors have been snapping up stocks at the fastest pace on record as U.S. equity markets have charged higher to start the year. Over the past month, retail investors funneled an average of $1.51 billion each day into U.S. stocks, the highest amount ever recorded.
This chart and commentary are from the February Elliott Wave Theorist, a monthly publication since 1979 which provides analysis of major financial and social trends:
Observe in the chart that it has taken massive retail commitment just to get the S&P to tack on a small upward leg in the opening weeks of 2023