While Wall Street makes its “biggest ever” cut to US equities, everyday investors are charging into the storm, checkbooks swinging. Despite trade and tariff chaos sinking the S&P 500 by 4.69% this year, retail traders have poured $67B into US stocks, defiantly buying dips as professionals seek greener pastures.

• The selloff marked “one of the fastest US equity market corrections since the early 1970s,” said Goldman SachsGS
  — but retail conviction remained steadfast, with net sales on just seven trading days this year.
• Last week alone, these undeterred traders poured $3.2B into TeslaTSLA
  and $1.9B into NvidiaNVDA
  while maintaining their appetite for twice-leveraged ETFs — “respect the dip, be the dip, BUY THE DIP,” rallied r/wallstreetbets.

Smart money’s new playbook: While retail dives headfirst into US equities, professional investors are shifting their portfolios toward international markets and safer assets. The MSCI World index (excluding the US) has surged nearly 9% this year as JPMorganJPM

highlights a “watershed moment” in European geopolitics. Meanwhile, cash has flooded into short-term bonds rather than long-dated Treasuries — moves which the Financial Times likens to Wall Street’s growing concern that America’s economic empire might have peaked.