With institutions largely frozen and pushing short positions, it is safe to say that the month of May was largely a month of systematic traders, including CTAs (as we noted here), stock buybacks (as we noted here) and last but definitely not least, retail traders who took advantage of the abysmal market liquidity to become the dominant price setter in April, and to a lesser extent, in May when they took advantage of the market meltup to mix up the previous month's aggressive buying with some profit taking.
Today, JPM's latest Retail Radar note (available to pro subs) confirms as much, noting that the bank observed increased profit-taking flows from retail traders over the past month. In May, they net bought $23B, which is ~$17B less than March and April, but aligns with the average monthly net imbalance for the year ($25B), and at a similar level as the period of 2021 meme stock mania.
Compared to previous months, May saw only three days where the net buying exceeded the $2B threshold, while 4 days of net selling, primarily occurring in the last two weeks.
