The Pros Are Now Paying Attention To Day Traders

Last year, amateur investors took financial markets by storm. This year, Wall Street professionals are watching them closely.

Fund managers who might have once derided small-time day traders as “dumb money” are scouring social-media posts for clues about where the herd might veer next. Some 85% of hedge funds and 42% of asset managers are now tracking retail-trading message boards, according to a survey by Bloomberg Intelligence.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. in September introduced a new data product that includes information on which securities individual investors are likely buying and selling, as well as which sectors and stocks are being talked about on social media. About 50 clients, including some of the largest asset and quant managers, are testing the product, the bank says. JPMorgan equity traders are also using it to help manage their own risk.

“The flow from retail is not something you can ignore if you are a professional investor,” says Chris Berthe, JPMorgan’s global co-head of cash equities trading. “It’s a whole new investor class that has emerged, and it’s an investor class that’s actually getting themes right.”

Rookies rush in

The shift illustrates just how much the rookies have changed the investing landscape. A year ago, market observers were questioning if the retail revolution would continue. Now many are asking what it will look like this year.

After shying away from active investing for much of the past decade, millions of Americans, hunkered down at home because of Covid-19, became day traders in 2020. Enticed by volatile markets and phone apps that made it free to trade stocks, they flocked to social media for investing ideas. That year, they piled into stocks like Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (and ultimately were rewarded when the car-rental company exited bankruptcy). It is estimated that more than 10 million individual investors opened new brokerage accounts in 2020, according to Devin Ryan, director of financial-technology research at JMP Securities.

Last year the trends from 2020 accelerated. JMP Securities estimates that a further 15 million Americans signed up for brokerage accounts in 2021. Social-media forums became increasingly used for trading. Some individual investors used their growing numbers to send stocks including GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. flying. Many newbies relished in inflicting steep losses on some hedge funds and demonstrating that traditional playbooks aren’t the only way to win.

Investments that made little sense on paper became valuable in 2021 because day traders declared them so. Joke cryptocurrencies such as dogecoin—up more than 1,900% in the past year based on late Friday levels—minted self-proclaimed millionaires. A market for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), or digital images of items such as bored-ape avatars, exploded.

JPMorgan estimates that individual investors accounted for more than a third of daily trading activity several times over the past 18 months, reaching nearly 40% of shares traded on peak days.

To be sure, many of the newbies lost money. Some took on debt without understanding what they were doing, leaving them vulnerable to steep losses when stock prices fell. Riskier investing strategies, including options trading, exploded. Many amateur investors bought into buzzy shares near the top of rallies, only to watch the prices rapidly plummet.

Individual traders in 2021 purchased a net $292 billion of U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds, according to Vanda Research’s VandaTrack platform, which tracks and sells data on the purchases of U.S. equities by individual investors. That is more than seven times the amount in 2019. Individual investors so far appear poised to continue similar levels of buying activity in 2022.

Analysts expect a bumpier road ahead for U.S. stocks this year, and some money managers believe that any prolonged volatility could wash individual investors out of the market. Many say that today’s activity resembles the late 1990s, when individual investors piled into trading only to flee when the dot-com bubble burst.

So far, individual investors have shown a strong stomach for bumpy days. Last year, the group’s eight largest buying days by dollar volume occurred when the S&P 500 sank 1.3% or more, VandaTrack data show. Several academic papers have found that individual investors have at times helped stabilize markets, providing liquidity in times of volatility.

The big names notice

By some accounts, the newbie investors have already altered some professional investors’ trading strategies. One way in particular: the way some make bearish bets.

Meme stocks like GameStop had high levels of short interest before they caught the attention of Reddit traders. That means that other investors—usually professionals, like hedge funds—were betting those stocks would fall. When shorting a stock, an investor borrows shares of a company and sells them, hoping to buy them back later at a lower price.

When the amateurs sent GameStop and other stocks soaring, the short sellers were sometimes forced to buy back shares, often at much higher prices.

These days, investors are avoiding taking big chances with their short-selling plays, according to an analysis by Ihor Dusaniwsky. He is head of predictive analytics at S3 Partners, a technology and data analytics firm that closely tracks activity by short sellers.

Just seven stocks in the U.S. market had short interest of 40% or more at the end of 2021, according to his analysis of stocks where at least $10 million of shares had been sold short. That was down from 40 stocks at the beginning of January 2020 and 19 stocks in January 2021. And unlike the previous periods, no stocks in his analysis had short interest of 70% or more at the end of 2021.

Last year, S3 started offering new tools that tell clients which stocks have crowded levels of short interest and which could leave them vulnerable to sudden losses if individual investors pile in.

“In the back of every hedge fund’s mind is, ‘I don’t want to be on the wrong side of a meme-stock play,’ ” Mr. Dusaniwsky says. “It’s a full-time job to make sure you don’t get hit by a bus.”

Family offices are increasingly asserting their dominance in Australia’s private credit markets, particularly in the commercial real estate debt (CRED) segment.

With more than 2,000 family offices now operating nationally—an increase of over 150% in the past decade, according to KPMG—their influence is not only growing in scale, but also in strategic sophistication.

Traditionally focused on preserving intergenerational wealth, COI Capital has found that family offices have broadened their mandates to include more active and yield-driven deployment of capital, particularly through private credit vehicles.

This shift is underpinned by a defensive allocation rationale: enhanced risk-adjusted returns, predictable income, and collateral-backed structures offer an attractive alternative to the volatility of public markets.

The Competitive Landscape for Manager Mandates

As family offices increase their exposure to private credit, the dynamic between managers and capital providers is evolving. Family offices are highly discerning capital allocators.

They expect enhanced reporting, real-time visibility into asset performance, and access to decision-makers are key differentiators for successful managers. Co-investment rights, performance-based fees, and downside protection mechanisms are increasingly standard features.

While typically fee-sensitive, many family offices are willing to accept standard management and performance fee structures when allocating $5M+ tickets, recognising the sourcing advantage and risk oversight provided by experienced managers. This has created a tiered market where only managers with demonstrated execution capability, origination networks, and robust governance frameworks are considered suitable partners.

Notably, many are competing by offering differentiated access models, such as segregated mandates, debt tranches, or tailored securitisation vehicles.

Onshore vs. Offshore Family Offices

There are important distinctions between onshore and offshore family offices in the context of CRED participation:

Onshore Family Offices: Typically have deep relationships with local stakeholders (brokers, valuers, developers) and a more intuitive understanding of planning, legal, and enforcement frameworks in Australian real estate markets. They are more likely to engage directly or via specialised mandates with domestic managers.
Offshore Family Offices: While often attracted to the yield premium and legal protections offered in Australia, they face structural barriers in accessing deal flow. Currency risk, tax treatment, and regulatory unfamiliarity are key concerns. However, they bring diversification and scale, often via feeder vehicles, special-purpose structures, or syndicated participation with Tier 1 managers.

COI Capital Management has both an offshore and onshore strategy to assist and suit both distinct Family Office needs.

Impact on the Broader CRED Market

The influx of family office capital into private credit markets has several systemic implications:

Family offices, deploying capital in significant tranches, have enhanced liquidity across the mid-market CRE sector.
Their ability to move quickly with minimal conditionality has contributed to yield compression, particularly on low-LVR, income-producing assets.
As a few family offices dominate large allocations, concerns emerge around pricing power, governance, and systemic concentration risk.

Unlike ADIs or superannuation funds, family offices operate outside the core prudential framework, raising transparency and risk management questions, particularly in a stress scenario.

So what is the answer? Are Family Offices the most Attractive?

Yes—family offices are arguably among the most attractive funding partners for CRED managers today. Their capital is not only flexible and long-term focused, but also often deployed with a strategic mindset.

Many family offices now have a deep understanding of the risk-return profile of CRE debt, making them highly engaged and informed investors.

They’re typically open to co-investment, bespoke structuring, and are less bogged down by institutional red tape, allowing them to move quickly and decisively when the right opportunity presents itself. For managers, this combination of agility, scale, and sophistication makes them a valuable and increasingly sought-after partner in the private credit space.

For high-performing CRED managers with demonstrable origination, governance, and reporting frameworks, family offices offer not only a reliable source of capital but also a collaborative partnership model capable of supporting large-scale deployments across market cycles.

Faris Dedic is the Founder and Managing Director of DIG Capital Advisory and COI Capital Management