What is a Retail Investor?
A retail investor is a term used to describe non-institutional and non-professional investors/traders who generally invest smaller sum of money. Wall Street refers to the “Average Joe” as a retail investor because they make regular investments in things like IRAs, 401ks, and traditional brokerage accounts.
Retail investors now dominate a huge portion of the market's overall volume ever since stock trading apps like Robinhood and Webull got so popular.