There’s no denying the growing popularity of retail investing in the USA. In 2023, it reached a high when it accounted for approximately 23% of trading volume in one week. Even though those figures dipped slightly after this high, retail investing continues to attract beginners and experienced investors alike.
To gain a deeper understanding of the topic, we analyzed feedback from 853,138 retail stock investors in the USA over 12 months, ending on March 17, 2025. We did this by leveraging AI-driven audience profiling to synthesize insights from online opinions to a high statistical confidence level.
Our findings highlight the most popular platforms for retail investing, the most common reasons for investing in retail, which are the most invested assets, the biggest challenges and concerns associated with retail investing, and other factors. Let’s take a look at what our data revealed.
Index
- 60% retail stock investors in the USA use Robinhood the most
- For 82% retail stock investors, passive income is the main reason for investing
- ETFs the most invested assets for 73% retail stock investors
- 33% of retail investors said their biggest challenge was understanding market trends
- Inflation the biggest concern about the stock market in the next year for 56%
- Day trading is the preferred investment strategy of 46% of our audience
- 51% of retail investors said diversification is essential for managing investment risks
- 44% of our audience research opportunities with the help of investment newsletters
- 94% of retail stock investors follow financial influencers online
- 46% of our audience think AI has a positive impact on investment decisions
- 50%of retail investors said financial education was very important in their investing journey
- 81% say AI-driven insights could help them make better investment decisions
- 85% of retail investors consider ESG when making investment decisions
- 92% retail stock investors reside in the Midwest
- Retail Investing On The Rise
- Methodology
Which Investment Platforms Do You Use Most Often?
60% retail stock investors in the USA use Robinhood the most
While Robinhood is the most popular investment platform among our audience, it’s by no means the only one:
While relatively basic, Robinhood has offerings that many other platforms don’t, and there are no minimum required investments or trading commissions. This may explain why 60% of retail stock investors use Robinhood most often. It’s worth noting that Robinhood Markets, along with Fidelity and Merrill Edge, topped the list of the Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) 13th annual Best Online Brokers Survey.
That said, our findings were somewhat different from the IBD survey. Preferred by 18% of our audience, Charles Schwab was the second most popular platform, followed by E*TRADE, which found a devoted following among 13% of retail investors in the USA. One of the more complex platforms, TD Ameritrade allows users to trade stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, futures, and a few fixed-income options. However, this comes with a higher entry bar, which may explain why only 4% of our audience said they use the platform often. The rest of our audience said they use various popular platforms (2%) and Fidelity (2%).
What Is Your Primary Reason For Investing?
For 82% retail stock investors, passive income is the main reason for investing
While the majority of our audience invest primarily to earn a passive income, some of our audience had slightly different reasons:
Our data shows that, as was to be expected, making money is the primary reason why retail stock investors invest. What this means, however, varies from person to person.
For 82%, earning a passive income is their main reason for retail investing. This is in keeping with Statista’s finding that more than 90% of US retail investors say that future growth potential was a driving factor when it came to making investment decisions.
The responses of the rest of our audience were also consistent with Statista’s data, even if individual goals differed slightly. 11% said they were focused on long-term wealth, while 5% said they aimed at making a profit in the short term. For 2% of the audience, wealth building, whether long or short, was their primary reason for investing.
What Type Of Assets Do You Invest In The Most?
ETFs the most invested assets for 73% of retail stock investors
As you can see, the rest of our audience prefers cryptocurrency, stocks, mutual funds, and bonds:
At 73%, the majority of retail stock investors said they mostly invest in exchange traded funds (ETFs). It’s easy to see why ETFs continue to be a popular choice. One reason for their popularity is that they’re more tax-efficient than securities bought and sold within mutual funds. They also have lower costs relative to mutual funds. While investors may pay commissions to buy or sell ETFs, they don’t need to worry about distribution fees.
17% of retail investors in the US said they mostly invested in cryptocurrency. Surprisingly, this finding was significantly different from those of an EY Parthenon survey published in 2024. According to the EY survey, 72% of respondents said that cryptocurrency was a key component of their wealth strategy. EY also found a 46% increase in ‘active’ uses of crypto, such as trading, payments, and staking, and a 36% decrease in ‘passive’ uses, such as long-term investment.
Stocks were preferred by 6% of our audience, while 3% said they mostly invested in mutual funds. Less than 1% said they often invested in bonds.
What Is Your Biggest Challenge When Investing?
33% of retail investors said their biggest challenge was understanding market trends
Investing comes with numerous challenges, including:
For 33% of investors in the US, understanding market trends was the biggest challenge when investing. This sentiment was echoed by the 25% who struggled to access reliable investment advice, 3% who said that not understanding trends was a challenge, and another 3% who said their biggest challenge was finding reliable information.
If we take a step back for a broader view of this, it’s clear that a lack of knowledge and understanding is the main challenge for more than half of our audience.
Our findings back up some of those in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Retail Investor Outlook 2024. According to WEF, retail investors are opting to invest in products that are more accessible and easier to understand than bonds, stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and other traditional investments. The WEF survey found that 29% of investors said they avoided stocks due to a lack of understanding, while 24% said they avoided crypto for the same reason. The biggest challenge for the non-investors surveyed by WEF included a lack of funds and fear of financial loss, with more than 50% saying they would feel more confident about investing if they had learned about it in school.
The challenge of a lack of funds was also something felt by our audience, with 28% saying their biggest obstacle was access to capital. Other challenges included risk management (5%) and managing emotions (3%). A City Index survey of 3,000 US-based investors revealed that 35% of them said their trading decisions were consistently influenced by their emotions.
What Is Your Biggest Concern About The Stock Market In The Next Year?
Inflation the biggest concern about the stock market in the next year for 56%
Retail stock investors are concerned about economic recession, market volatility, and other factors:
Able to weaken the purchasing power of investments to the point where they decline in real value, inflation is the biggest concern about the stock market in the next year for 56% of retail stock investors. Unsurprisingly, given the link between higher interest rates and a slower economy, 30% of our audience is concerned about economic recession, while 6% expressed concern about interest rates.
These fears may be justified: a 2025 Deutsche Bank survey indicated that there’s an approximately 40% chance that the US is heading for a recession. 9% of our audience expressed concerns about market volatility.
The retail investors comprising our audience weren’t the only ones with concerns about the stock market over the next year. An Investopedia survey found that 61% of respondents were worried or somewhat worried about recent market events. More than 40% said they expected another significant drop for the S&P 500 in the next few months, while 33% said they were investing less in the stock market. 26% said they increased their investment in money market funds.
What Investment Strategy Do You Prefer?
Day trading is the preferred investment strategy of 46% of our audience
Delve into what our data says about our audience’s preferred investment strategies:
For 46% of retail stock investors, day trading is their preferred strategy. However, this may not be the best approach as an Investopedia article claims that only between 3% and 20% of day traders make money.
Despite the relatively poor returns, this strategy remains popular partly due to impressions created by the media, which portray it as an easy way to make millions of dollars within a single trading day.
Preferred by 18% of our audience, buy and hold was the next most popular investment strategy, followed by swing trading (16%) and long-term (9%). 5% said they opted for growth investing, while another 5% turned to value investing. Only 1% of our audience said they preferred short-term trading.
How Do You Manage Investment Risks?
51% of retail investors said diversification is essential for managing investment risks
The graph below shows the different ways in which our audience manages investment risks:
For 51% of our audience of retail investors, diversification was essential for managing investment risks. Interestingly, an HSBC survey revealed that 36% of investors find it difficult to monitor and manage a diversified portfolio.
As for the rest of our audience, 42% said that long-term investing was effective, while 6% turned to stop-losses, and 1% said that hedging was their essential risk management strategy.
How Do You Research Investment Opportunities?
44% of our audience research opportunities with the help of investment newsletters
Our audience turns to different sources, from newsletters and social media to friends and family, to research investment opportunities:
Often featuring sound advice, investment newsletters were the preferred method of researching investment opportunities for 44% of our audience, while 18% said they used financial news sites. However, social media actually proved more popular for research, as this was preferred by 20% of retail investors.
The popularity of social media was also picked up by an IR survey, which found that 22% of the investors it surveyed made investment decisions based on digital promotions or celebrity endorsements they saw on social media.
While 8.9% of our audience said they used stock screeners, 5% said they did thorough research, and another 5% said they turned to friends and family. This last result was far more conservative than the IR survey’s 37% of investors who relied on the recommendations of family and friends.
Do You Follow Financial Influencers Or Investment Advisors Online?
94% of retail stock investors follow financial influencers online
It’s clear that financial influencers have a following, but the frequency differs dramatically:
Our data shows that an incredible 94% of retail investors in the US follow financial influencers or finfluencers on social media, with 6% following them frequently. This finding is noticeably higher than that of a FINRA report published a few years ago, which indicated that 60% of investors under the age of 35 used social media as an information source. Finfluencers are one of the reasons why young people have started investing. According to CFA Institute research, 37% of Gen-Z investors said finfluencers were a major factor in their decision to start investing.
How Do You Feel About The Impact Of AI on Investment Decisions?
46% of our audience think AI has a positive impact on investment decisions
Our audience’s opinions about AI’s impact on investment decisions are divided:
At 46%, slightly less than half of our audience thinks that AI has a positive impact on investment decisions, followed by 20% who said that the impact is somewhat positive. The use of AI in making investment decisions appears to be gaining traction. According to Statista, in 2023, approximately 20% of retail investors used AI for financial research, while 50% said they were interested in using AI.
However, perceptions of using AI for investment decisions weren’t entirely positive. 14% of retail stock investors said AI’s impact had been somewhat negative, compared with 13% who said the impact was negative and 8% who said the impact was very negative.
How Important Is Financial Education In Your Investing Journey?
50% of retail investors said financial education was very important in their investing journey
All 853,138 retail stock investors recognize the importance and value of financial education to varying degrees:
For 50% of US-based retail investors, financial education was a very important factor in their investing journey. Their sentiments were echoed by 25% who said it was crucial for success and another 25% who said it’s crucial for retail.
Despite a recognition of the value of financial education among our audience, many American adults have never received any. According to the World Economic Forum, approximately 50% of adults in the US are financially literate – a figure that has dropped by 2% over the last two years.
Thankfully, the importance of financial literacy is not lost on younger people who will become the next generation of retail investors. A recent Intuit survey found that while most high school students rely on their parents for financial knowledge, 85% of them are interested in learning about financial topics at school, while 95% of students who currently receive financial curriculum find it helpful.
What Additional Resources Or Tools Would Help Improve Your Investment Decisions?
81% say AI-driven insights could help them make better investment decisions
From AI and coaching to improved platforms and educational content, various additional resources can improve investment decisions:
As AI continues to take the world by storm, it’s no surprise that 81% of retail stock investors said that it would help improve their investment decisions – and it’s not only our audience who feel this way. According to Mercer, 54% of managers are currently using AI within their investment strategy or asset class research, while 37% are planning to do so.
While AI dominated responses, it wasn’t the only additional resource that would help with better decision-making. Other resources they named include personalized coaching (7%), better platforms (7%), and more educational content (4%).
Do You Consider ESG Environmental Social Governance Factors When Making Investment Decisions?
85% of retail investors consider ESG factors when making investment decisions
Our entire audience usually considers ESG factors when making investment decisions:
Our data makes it clear that environmental social governance (ESG) factors are important to our entire audience of retail investors in the US. However, whether these factors influence their every investment decision is another matter. While 85% said they consider ESG in their investment decisions, it was only 16% who said they always consider ESG when making decisions.
By comparison, the 2024 Institutional Investor Survey on Sustainability found that 67% of investors consider ESG quality among other factors when making an investment decision, with 2% using it to screen out potential investments. 41% of their respondents said that ESG wasn’t important.
Where In The USA Do You Primarily Reside?
92% retail stock investors reside in the Midwest
Find out in the graph below which other region was represented among our retail investor audience:
92% of our audience reside primarily in the USA’s Midwest, with 8% residing in the Northeast. While this may be surprising for some who expected the Northeast or Southwest to feature more prominently, it’s less so when you consider the surprising growth shown in the Midwest over the last couple of years.
Retail Investing On The Rise
Relatively accessible to beginners thanks to various platforms and apps such as Robinhood, retail investing continues to grow in popularity. Whether they aim for short-term profits or building wealth over the long term, retail investors have a variety of options to choose from, such as ETFs and cryptocurrency, to stocks and bonds.
However, as some people who are new to investing have discovered, being able to access these options is one thing, but understanding trends and overcoming various challenges is quite another. There’s no substitute for good financial education, although advice from advisors and financial influencers can help with making decisions, as can help. As social media and AI continue to shape the sector, retail investing should become even more accessible and popular than it already is.
Methodology
Sourced from an independent sample of 853,138 retail stock investors in the USA across X, Bluesky, Reddit, TikTok, and Threads. Responses are collected within a 95% confidence interval and 3% margin of error. Engagement estimates how many people in the location are participating. Demographics are determined using many features, including name, location, and self-disclosed description. Privacy is preserved using k-anonymity and differential privacy. Results are based on what people describe online — questions were not posed to the people in the sample.
About the representative sample:
- 57% of retail stock investors in the USA are over the age of 45 years old.
- 61% identify as male.
- 43% earn between $200,000 and $500,000 annually.
