A year ago, speculative stocks such as
GameStop Corp.
were some of the most-favored choices of individual investors. Since then, though, their tastes have changed.
Retail investors’ top picks now look more like they did in early 2020, when the roster of the most-popular U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds was made up almost entirely of shares of well-established companies in the benchmark S&P 500 and ETFs representing broad bets on U.S. stocks or bonds, according to data from VandaTrack.
As the pandemic progressed through 2020 and then 2021, shares of electric-vehicle companies and meme stocks popular on social media were among those that broke into the list of investments most popular with individual investors. More…
