Retail investors are underperforming as if there is a bear market

Greed is more painful than ever in this market

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Global Markets Investor
February 16, 2026

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GLOBAL MARKETS INVESTOR’S PORTFOLIO IS 🔥UP +95%🔥SINCE JANUARY 2024

DURING THE MARCH-APRIL 2025 MARKET TURMOIL, MAJOR US INDEXES FELL NEARLY 20%, WHILE THE GMI PORTFOLIO GAINED OVER 5%, FIND OUT HOW BELOW:

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An average return of RobinHood, $HOOD ( ▼ 5.04% ) , user in Q4 2025 was -24.6%, the 3rd-worst quarterly performance over the last 6 years.

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This comes after two best quarters on record and a massive underperformance in Q1 2025.

Meanwhile, all Magnificent 7 stocks are declining year-to-date, underperforming the broader market.

Microsoft, $MSFT ( ▼ 1.67% ) , and Amazon, $AMZN ( ▲ 0.13% ) , are the biggest laggards with -17.0% and -13.9% drops.

Some of them have not seen gains for months, with Microsoft having no gains over the last 2 years.

These are the most favourite retail investor stocks (we can add to that Palantir, $PLTR ( ▲ 0.2% ) , and MicroStrategy $MSTR ( ▼ 3.18% ) ).

Notably, retail investors also recently bought a record amount of equities over the last 3 weeks as outlined in the Sunday’s market recap.

Given all of this, James Chanos estimates that in January, individual investors lost another –$4–5 billion in aggregate.

That could mean Robinhood users have almost made no money since Q2 2021, or when the meme stock frenzy ended. Nearly 5 years of investing and trading for nothing. This also came with a huge amount of volatility, as they have had 10 negative quarters since then.

Over the same period, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 have returned +59% and +70%, while gold and silver are up +186% and +200%, respectively.

So what is the main reason for such underperformance, especially over the last few months? Underlying single-stock volatility is far higher than the broader market, with many individual stocks seeing significant declines even as the overall market remains relatively steady. This is explained in Saturday’s post below.

⚠️CHART OF THE WEEK: The US stock market is completely destroyed under the surface

This has rarely occurred outside of the bear market

globalmarketsinvestor.beehiiv.com/p/chart-of-the-week-the-us-stock-market-is-completely-destroyed-under-the-surface

Meanwhile, Global Markets Investor’s portfolio has been up +13.6% year-to-date and +95.7% since January 2024, the year it began being reported to subscribers.

This has come with much less volatility than the average investor’s portfolio has experienced.

US stocks declined this week driven by AI disruption fears. Weekly market recap, trading week 07/2026

Summary of the trading week using the most popular posts from the X platform

globalmarketsinvestor.beehiiv.com/p/us-stocks-ended-the-week-mixed-after-a-powerful-rebound-on-friday-weekly-market-recap-trading-week-0

⚠️US stock market is falling on renewed AI fears

Every day, a new sector falls victim to AI disruption concerns

globalmarketsinvestor.beehiiv.com/p/us-stock-market-is-falling-on-renewed-ai-fears

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