Exchanges, market makers, and retail brokers as well as investor associations report that households are buying equities – often via apps and dollar-cost averaging – even as institutional money hedges and de-risks. In fact, they tend to buy more when volatility rises.
On Euronext’s cash markets, Roland Prévot, head of retail at Euronext,
said at FIX Paris: “Across Euronext, retail represents about 3.5% of cash-equity turnover, rising to 6% in periods of high volatility. But the picture varies: in the Netherlands retail is around 10%, and in Italy it’s closer to 20–25%, which is much more comparable to the US.”
For Anne Gaignard, chief executive director at Place des investisseurs, a not-for-profit organization aiming to educate and help retail investor better invest, the new cohort of retail traders is structurally risk-tolerant and focused on ease of access rather than market plumbing. 
She said: “If we consider the young generation… they don’t care about liquidity, really. What they want is accessibility – they want to be able to trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” and added: “They want an app, very simple… to open an account in three minutes, and they want to be able to trade everywhere immediately.”
At eToro, which counts more than 40 million retail investors and traders on its platform, Julien Nebenzahl, president of the Patrimoine subsidiary, sees that behaviour reinforced by systematic investing. “Dollar-cost-average investments or programmed investment plans mean that investors can add smaller amounts each month rather than a lump sum. If you add money each month instead of at once, you have a better chance of getting a good average price.”
From a macro perspective, Laurent Clavel, head of cross-asset at AXA IM, argued that younger investors are far from under-exposed to AI or the “Magnificent Seven”.
He said: “The new generations want to be rich, but the stock market doesn’t make you rich with an average of 7% annualised. Gen Z are trying to find ways of getting rich fast, yet many of them have other priorities than money and a traditional career; they want to be happy and do something meaningful. In my opinion they will be the ones investing in good companies locally, because that’s what they really want.”
European exchanges are all vying to tap this retail flow. Euronext, with its historic “Best of Book” offering, and Cboe, which recently launched its dedicated programme, provide retail trading schemes allowing retail flows to trade for free within designated market-making frameworks. Retail orders are valued by market makers as relatively uninformed and non-toxic counterparties. From next year, payment-for-order-flow will also be banned in Germany, where it is currently permitted.
Marie Heraud, Director, Cash Equities Sales at Cboe Europe, said:
“There’s a lot to envy about the US retail market, particularly in terms of the high levels of participation, but from a market-structure perspective there are elements we should consider. The vast majority of US retail trades off-exchange, which is a missed opportunity for the market as a whole given in Europe it is mostly on-exchange currently. Keeping retail on-exchange in multilateral trading venues creates a more diverse ecosystem for the benefit of all participants and promotes price competition and stronger price formation on those venues.”
Retail investors are one of the key supports for equity markets into year-end, according to a Citadel securities report obtained by Global Trading and authored by Scott Rubner, head of equity and equity derivatives strategy, dated 20 November.
Rubner said: “Institutional positioning has been sharply reduced heading into Thanksgiving, while retail demand has remained remarkably resilient.”
He added: “Retail flow has been decisively skewed to the buy side… Retail investors did not panic through recent volatility and remain one of the most important sources of demand in 2025.” Retail has remained the primary driver of call demand, with 29 consecutive weeks of net call buying and households absorbing mechanical, non-fundamental supply.
