Everyday Traders Go From Fringe Players to Dominant Market Force

It was the year individual investors took over Wall Street. Again.

In 2025, small-dollar day traders and other everyday investors played a bigger role in more markets than ever before. They traded options, sent a new class of

meme stocks to the moon and piled into the Magnificent Seven tech companies when the “smart money” got skittish. And they made their presence known just about everywhere else, from precious metals and sporting-event prediction contracts to public stock offerings and late-stage startup investments.