STOCK MARKET: What they’re buying in 2026 after strong year

Fresh off a bumper 2025, retail investors are rushing back into the market with a focus on energy stocks.

Everyday traders bought at the second-highest level in almost eight months at the start of 2026’s trading year, according to a JPMorgan report released Wednesday. Oil-related stocks were a particularly hot pick for mom-and-pop investors following the U.S.’s weekend strike on Venezuela, data shows.

“Retail investors favored some of the companies that can immediately profit from the potential return of Venezuelan heavy crude to the [U.S.] or those needed to rebuild the country’s decaying oil infrastructure,” Arun Jain, JPMorgan’s quant analyst, told clients.

Net daily retail inflows into Halliburton spiked to the highest level since early 2022, according to market research firm VandaTrack. Flows into Chevron — which Wall Street quickly crowned a key beneficiary of the military intervention — hit highs going back to summer, the firm found.

Beyond those stocks, JPMorgan found surging retail inflows into fellow oil industry stalwarts such as Baker Hughes and SLB as investors wondered what was next for the global industry.

Venezuela sits on the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, but output has dropped significantly from its peak in the late 1990s. President Donald Trump said the South American country would ship up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. following the strike. American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and brought them to the U.S. on drug trafficking charges.

Specifically, Chevron surged in popularity on retail investor discussion platforms like Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum over the weekend following the strike, according to Breakout Point. But the crowd had largely moved onto other names by Tuesday, which isn’t surprising given it wasn’t previously an attention-grabbing stock for this group, said Ivan Ćosović, managing director at Breakout Point.

Said another way: The “Chevr-on” trade became “Chevr-off,” according to Ćosović.

To be sure, it’s not yet clear if these big bets from average Joe traders in the wake of the Venezuela action will pay off long term. Halliburton, SLB and Baker Hughes shares have jumped this week, while Chevron has whipsawed following a big Monday rally.

But pullbacks don’t necessarily mean retail traders will abandon the theme, according to Viraj Patel, deputy head of research at Vanda. If oil plays out for these investors like the popular artificial intelligence trade, they will likely hang around for the ride.

“Once retail gets its teeth into a theme, they don’t let go — like a dog with a bone,” Patel said. “AI showed us that if retail believes in something, they’ll keep buying even on bad days.”

This interest in energy can also signal a shift away from high-growth names to those with more cash flow generation, according to Patel. Retail trading also picked up for oil-focused exchange-traded funds like the State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE), he said.

JPMorgan’s Jain reported record retail flows in 2025, with everyday investors rushing into the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) fund and AI stocks like Nvidia and Palantir — all of which rallied sharply. Overall annual inflows were close to double the five-year average and almost 60% higher than in 2024, per the bank’s data.

Retail traders’ jump into equities to start the new year follows a seasonal slowdown in the last week of 2025, Jain added.

Small investors bought the dip successfully at early points in the year, allowing them to ride the market’s dramatic midyear rebound to all-time highs, according to Vanda and JPMorgan. Because of that, their reputation has moved away from the “dumb money” caricature defined by meme stock surges and short squeezes toward one of a more mature market participant.

“Institutional investors are no longer asking how to fade retail,” Patel said. “They’re asking, ‘What are they seeing that we’re not?'”