I retail hanno cominciato ad entrare pesantemente sul mercato USA solo da pochi giorni.....
Retail investors missed most of recent rally
But as indexes hit records, individuals have begun piling back in
By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch
Last Update: 3:54 PM ET Oct 18, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Flow eventually follows performance.
That's how Charles Biderman, chief executive of stock-market-liquidity tracker TrimTabs Investment Research, describes the behavior of retail investors.
As equity markets rise, individuals are lured into buying more shares or adding extra dollars to mutual funds invested in stocks. By the time they've invested, the smart money -- corporations with insight into the health of their own businesses -- has usually stopped buying equities and gone elsewhere, according to Biderman.
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaching 12,000 points for the first time ever Wednesday, this unhappy cycle may have begun again, Biderman and others said. See related story.
Retail investors "are starting to participate, but they didn't begin until nine days ago," Biderman said in an interview.
TrimTabs estimates that $2.5 billion was put into U.S. domestic equity mutual funds from Oct. 4 through Oct. 16, with $900 million flowing in Monday alone.
But as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was rising more than 2% in September, just $2 billion flowed into U.S. domestic equity funds.
From May through August, when the Dow was testing its 2006 lows, more than $20 billion flowed out of U.S. domestic equity funds, TrimTabs calculates.
That was just the time that investors should have been putting money into the stock market, said Biderman, who noted that companies were buying back their own shares in massive amounts then.
Companies in the Russell 1000 Index repurchased $2.4 billion of their stock a day during the third quarter and $2.2 billion a day in the second quarter, according to TrimTabs estimates. That's up from $1.8 billion a day during the fourth quarter of 2005.
"Companies have been heavy buyers as the market begins to go up," while retail investors have been sellers, Biderman said. "Individuals invest with their hands on the steering wheel, their foot on the gas and their eyes on the rearview mirror."
Others have taken note of retail investors' reluctance to get more involved in the U.S. stock market, despite recent gains.
'The rise in equities did not translate into a lot of trading revenue.'
— Chris Dodds, Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab & Co. , one of the largest discount brokers, said this week that it hadn't seen a big rush into the market from individual investors. See full story.
"The rise in equities did not translate into a lot of trading revenue," Schwab Chief Financial Officer Chris Dodds said. "We're not seeing retail investors getting enthusiastic. They haven't jumped into equities."
In late September, Goldman Sachs analysts trimmed third-quarter earnings estimates for online brokers TD Ameritrade because September trading hadn't been as strong as they had forecast. See full story.
The U.S. stock rally in early October wasn't the result of money flowing into traditional mutual funds, top Banc of America Securities strategist Thomas McManus said in a Monday note to clients.
More than $1.1 billion flowed out of domestic equity funds in the week ending Oct. 11. A week before, more than $1.5 billion left those U.S. equity funds, McManus noted.
"At big turning points you typically find retail, and even big institutional investors, leaning the wrong way," McManus said in an interview on Wednesday.
...bene, molto bene 
...grazie 
