A team led by Citigroup equity strategist Stuart Kaiser said in a report released on Sunday that over the past five trading days through last Friday, retail trading volume accounted for only 6% of the total turnover of the “Magnificent Seven” (including Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and Tesla (TSLA)). By comparison, during 2023 and 2024, that ratio frequently exceeded 20% over five-day periods, and in 2025 it mostly remained above 15%. Citigroup believes this trend suggests that retail confidence in high-profile tech stocks may be weakening.
Kaiser pointed out that retail trading volume began to decline late last year and continued into 2026, though the specific reasons remain difficult to pinpoint. He analyzed that retail capital may be shifting toward leveraged ETFs, or flowing into prediction markets, or that rising living costs such as higher gasoline prices may have reduced the proportion of tax refund funds channeled into the stock market. The report showed that as of last Friday, overall retail trading volume fell 15% in June, while total market turnover actually rose 12% over the same period, marking a notable pullback in retail participation. Among the group, Nvidia saw the most pronounced decline in retail trading, with its retail volume accounting for 8.1% of its total turnover last week, down from 9.6% the previous week. Retail investors had long favored Nvidia, but market sentiment shifted after the outbreak of the Iran war, and in March of this year retail investors turned net sellers of the stock for the first time since July 2025.
Citigroup data show that over the past week, retail interest in the “Magnificent Seven” was lower than on approximately 85% of trading days since 2022. Tesla remains the stock with the highest retail interest, with a trading volume share of 10%, though that too is near its lowest level since 2022. The decline in retail risk appetite at the individual stock level is also reflected in the broader market.
As the “Magnificent Seven” have underperformed, some market participants have begun to refer to them as the “Lag Seven,” implying they are no longer leading the market. Data show that the Bloomberg index tracking the group has fallen 3.1% so far this year, while the S&P 500 has risen 8.7% over the same period. Over the past nine months, the group as a whole has shown virtually no significant gains. In addition, Citigroup’s David Chew team also cautioned that although the Nasdaq 100 Index has pulled back in June, investor positioning in the technology sector remains elevated overall, and U.S. tech stocks still face further downside risk.
