Every time markets fell in early 2026, retail traders bought. Every time volatility spiked, they added to positions. By mid-February, that habit had produced data that Scott Rubner, head of equity and equity derivatives strategy at Citadel Securities, described as unlike anything the firm has seen since it started tracking flows in 2017.
"Net notional on our platform has reached levels we have never observed before," Rubner wrote in a note to clients last week. "The magnitude, persistence, and breadth of buying activity have materially exceeded prior peaks, underscoring retail's role as a primary source of incremental demand in early 2026."
From January 2 through February 13, average daily dollar demand for US equities on Citadel's platform was running about 25% ahead of the previous high from 2021 and nearly double the average posted across the entire 2020-to-2025 period. Put differently: the retail surge that defined the pandemic era is no longer the benchmark. A new one has replaced it.
CFD Market Is Booming
These developments arrive just as the CFD and retail brokerage industry had been heading into 2026 with unusual momentum. Active CFD accounts globally crossed 6 million at year-end, climbing 14.6% in the fourth quarter despite the seasonal slowdowns that typically weigh on client activity during that period.
The growth trajectory shows no signs of plateauing. FMIntel estimates suggest total industry monthly volume across tracked retail brokers could surpass $37.3 trillion in 2026, based on a 25% forward CAGR projection. Notably, that figure is our conservative baseline.
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The actual compound annual growth rate across the prior five years ran closer to 40%, meaning the realized outcome could comfortably exceed those projections if retail participation continues at its current pace.
That trajectory assumed retail participation would continue expanding. Whether it does now depends in part on what happens to a buy-the-dip reflex that has never faced this particular combination of threats at the same time.
Retail Bought the AI Selloff Too
Much of the buying came as a direct response to AI-driven market weakness. When Anthropic rolled out a productivity tool aimed at corporate legal teams, shares in legal software and publishing companies dropped. Wealth management stocks followed after Altruist Corp introduced a competing tax-strategy offering, dragging down Charles Schwab Corp. and LPL Financial Holdings Inc. in the process.
Hedge funds, meanwhile, were heading the other way, Goldman Sachs noted that institutional short positions hit record levels during the same stretch of selling. Retail investors absorbed the supply.
Their appetite extended well beyond technology. Citadel's year-to-date data shows retail money flowing into materials, real estate, financials, communication services and industrials, a broadening that suggests the group was hunting value across the board, not just defending tech positions. Vanda Research described the behavior as investors being "conditioned to buy weakness," with the implication that the pattern may now act as an informal price floor across equity markets.
Options Activity Signals a Structural Shift
The derivatives market tells the same story at a larger scale. Average daily options volume in 2026 has been running nearly 50% above the 2020-to-2025 baseline and more than 15% ahead of last year's pace, according to Citadel's data.
"Retail options investors have skewed toward net buying in 41 of the past 42 weeks, a consistency that points to sustained risk appetite rather than sporadic positioning," Rubner wrote.
The surge wasn't isolated to a single platform. Trading volumes on Public, a retail investment app, jumped 304% year-over-year during January's tariff-related market dip, offering a clear view of how quickly retail capital mobilizes around weakness. That activity fed directly into a broader growth story across the retail brokerage industry.
According to data tracked through FMIntel, Finance Magnates' newly launched market intelligence portal, available for free registration, retail CFD volumes surged through the final months of 2025, with five firms crossing the $1 trillion monthly volume threshold in Q4 alone. Three months earlier, only IC Markets, IG Group and EC Markets had cleared that bar.
Tariff Ruling Hands the Pattern Its Hardest Test
The environment retail traders now face looks very different from the selloffs they have absorbed. On Friday, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to invalidate the tariffs Trump had imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, ruling that the statute did not give the president authority to set levies unilaterally. Trump responded within hours, signing an executive order replacing them with a 10% global tariff through a separate legal pathway.
By Saturday, he had raised that figure to 15%, the statutory maximum under the provision he invoked, via a post on Truth Social. The new levies expire after 150 days unless Congress extends them, and legal challenges are already anticipated.
That sequence creates a different kind of uncertainty from what dip-buyers have navigated before. An AI-driven selloff or an earnings disappointment has a clear narrative and a recoverable bottom.
A tariff regime that has been partially invalidated, replaced under contested legal authority, and faces a potential second round of litigation does not offer the same clarity.
