Various Halliburton equipment stored at an equipment yard in Alvarado, Texas.
Cooper Neal | Reuters
Fresh off a bumper harvest in 2025, retail investors are rushing back into the market with an eye on energy stocks.
Daily traders bought at the start of the 2026 trading year at the second-highest level in about eight months, according to a JPMorgan report released Wednesday. Oil stocks received particular attention among retail investors following the U.S. attack on Venezuela over the weekend, data showed.
“Retail investors are favoring some companies that could quickly benefit from the potential return of Venezuelan heavy crude oil (to the U.S.) and those needed to rebuild the country’s aging oil infrastructure,” JPMorgan quantitative analyst Arun Jain told clients.
The daily net retail inflow is halliburton It has soared to its highest level since early 2022, according to market research firm Vandertrack. flows into chevron Wall Street quickly became the main beneficiary of the military intervention, but the company found that the stock hit all-time highs dating back to the summer.
Beyond these stocks, JPMorgan also found a surge in retail capital flows to the oil industry’s leading companies. baker hughes and S.L.B. Investors were wondering what would happen next for the global industry.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but production has fallen significantly since 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 United States in the wake of the attack. The US military arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and brought them to the US on drug trafficking charges.
Specifically, Chevron’s popularity skyrocketed on retail investor discussion platforms such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum over the weekend following the strike, according to Breakout Points. But by Tuesday, most of the crowd had moved on to other names, which isn’t surprising given that it hasn’t been a high-profile stock for the group so far, said Ivan Chosovich, managing director at Breakout Points.
In other words, according to Chosovics, the “shaver on” trade has become “shaver off.”
Indeed, it remains to be seen whether these big bets by the average Joe trader in the wake of Venezuela’s actions will pay off in the long term. Shares of Halliburton, SLB and Baker Hughes soared this week, while Chevron soared after Monday’s big rally.
Oil stock for the past 5 days
But Viraj Patel, Vanda’s deputy head of research, said the withdrawal doesn’t necessarily mean retail traders will abandon the subject. If oil develops in favor of these investors, like the popular artificial intelligence trade, they will be more than willing to hang around.
“Once a retailer gets interested in a subject, they’re like a dog with a bone, and they don’t let it go,” Patel said. “AI has shown that if retailers believe in something, they will continue to buy, even on bad days.”
Patel said this energy focus could also signal a shift from high-growth companies to companies that generate more cash flow. Individual trading in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) specializing in oil also recovered. State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE)he said.
Retail’s next challenge
Energy could be the latest test for a group that performed well last year, sparking a shift in the narrative among big investors.
JP Morgan’s Jain reported that 2025 will see record retail flows and everyday investors flooding into this market. SPDR Gold Share (GLD) Funds, AI stocks, etc. Nvidia and Palantir — everything rebounded sharply. Overall annual inflows are nearly double the average of the past five years and up nearly 60% compared to 2024, the bank’s data shows.
Jain added that retail traders jumped into the stock market at the beginning of the new year following the seasonal economic slowdown in the last week of 2025.
According to Vanda and JPMorgan, small investors were able to buy the dip at the start of the year and ride the market’s dramatic rebound to record highs in mid-year. As such, their reputation has shifted away from the “dumb money” caricature defined by meme stock spikes and short squeezes and toward one of the more mature market participants.
“Institutional investors are no longer looking to see how retail will decline,” Patel said. “They’re asking, ‘What do they see that we don’t see?'”
