Investors aggressively buy the dip as Trump's tariff turmoil continues to shake markets

The fallout from President Trump's tariff announcements and revisions hasn't yet pushed investors to shy distant from an aged habit: buying the dip.

Data from VandaTrack showed the week pursuing "Liberation Day" saw "record dip-buying flows from retail investors," including $3 cardinal successful nett purchases connected April 3, the largest regular full since VandaTrack began collecting this information successful 2014.

Global markets sold disconnected sharply successful the archetypal absorption to Trump's reciprocal tariff announcements that pushed levies to their highest level successful a century. Across trading connected April 3 and 4, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) experienced 1 of its worst two-day stretches successful history.

Since this archetypal crash, markets person remained volatile, with the scale seeing its champion single-day rally since 2008 past Wednesday, April 9.

Read more: The latest quality and updates connected Trump's tariffs

"Even anterior to Trump's tariff U-turn, retail investors remained good abbreviated of capitulating," the VandaTrack squad wrote successful a enactment connected April 9. "The glass-half-empty mentation is that if this rally turns retired to beryllium a specified carnivore marketplace bounce, the hazard of further downside remains connected the cards."

VandaTrack's squad added that retail traders not buying the dip is simply a "hallmark motion of equity marketplace bottoms," but it's not a "necessary information for an equity trough."

"At the slightest whiff of bully news, radical travel roaring backmost successful due to the fact that that FOMO [fear of missing out] ne'er goes away," Interactive Brokers main strategist Steven Sosnick told Yahoo Finance past week.

"It's ever there. No 1 ever wants to miss a rally."

VandaTrack's information isn't the lone denotation investors person been assertive successful scooping up stocks during the caller drawdown.

An April 8 enactment from Bank of America showed the firm's clients were nett buyers of $8 cardinal worthy of banal during the week of the archetypal tariff announcements. This marked the fourth-largest play inflow successful Bank of America's information going backmost to 2008.

Data from Deutsche Bank published Monday besides showed equity inflows of astir $50 cardinal past week — the largest magnitude seen successful 2025 — including $31 cardinal flowing into US stocks.

Deutsche Bank main strategist Bankim Chadha told Yahoo Finance the information shows "risk appetite is inactive alive."

Chadha added that the caller flows mightiness not beryllium an indicator that investors are intentionally buying the dip but alternatively a continuation of a post-pandemic inclination of consumers putting excess savings into stocks.