SPACs are back. The IPOs are blockbuster. The valuations are stupid. Is it 2021 all over again?

Only if there’s such a thing as Dec. 233 (not a typo).

It was slow going for growth stocks and retail investors for years; what felt like eons as some ailing names halved. Some went to zero. But in 2025, even in the face of still-high interest rates, tariff troubles, and geopolitical tremors, the Main Street crowd is once again leaving its mark on Wall Street.

Their own interest and twist: They were greedy while others were fearful, buying the April tariff tumble and helping put the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 back on its feet. But by comparison, the N100’s 10.6% year-to-date performance — although something of a miracle comeback — pales in comparison to the returns that retail is pulling out of growth names across fintech, aerospace, AI, healthtech, and energy. In a way, individual investors are collectively shaping the market in their own image, with some of the stocks they champion among the best performers of the year.

• Retail-popular stocks like AI lender PagayaPGY
  , nuclear power aspirant OkloOKLO
  , and satellite firm AST SpaceMobileASTS
  are among the best performers this year — up 228%, 191%, and 168% respectively.
• Market newcomers like CircleCRCL
  , CoreWeaveCRWV
  , and AIROAIRO
  have scored triple-digit returns this year — up 595%, 214%, and 128% respectively, courtesy the retail crowd’s investment in new IPOs.

Don’t Fight the Tape

It used to be that Main Street would “follow the money,” but as retail-popular stocks — which exhibit lower institutional ownership, higher retail and insider ownership, and greater social buzz — have seen greater returns, Wall Street has perked up.

• PalantirPLTR
  , Super MicroSMCI
  , and CoinbaseCOIN
  have joined the S&P 500 in the last year after becoming retail popular stocks; they’ve continued contributing to the index’s returns, up 101%, 72%, and 62%, respectively, YTD.
• Taking note, institutional ownership has piled into retail-popular plays like RobinhoodHOOD
  , +168% YTD), Hims & HersHIMS
  , +90%), and Rocket LabRKLB
  , +89%).

Forward-looking: Main Street made bad investment decisions in 2020 and 2021. Will 2025 be a repeat? At first glance, the valuations of many retail-popular stocks are much steeper than comparables in the Nasdaq-100 index, but largely immune from trade policy, retail’s 2025 picks seem to be heading in the right direction for now — identifying their next trade could offer opportunities not just to outperform, but frontrun an an increasingly invested (literally) Wall Street.