US retail investors dive into tech stocks in response to DeepSeek selloff

By Suzanne McGee

Jan 30 (Reuters) - Individual investors responded to the market selloff earlier this week triggered by concerns regarding a Chinese artificial intelligence startup by buying a wide array of technology stocks, according to data released by Vanda Research on Wednesday.

Retail investors poured one out of every three dollars of their investments into Nvidia shares NVDA.O in the first days of this week when the AI chipmaker suffered a record one-day loss in market value, according to market tracking firm Vanda.

It also reported retail investors were eager purchasers of Tesla TSLA.O, Broadcom AVGO.O and Apple AAPL.O. Investors also snapped up tech-focused exchange-traded funds like the Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ.O and a leveraged ETF offering three times the daily return of the Nasdaq 100 Index.

"This buy-the-dip opportunity is proving to be too attractive for individual investors to pass up on," said the VandaTrack report's authors, Marco Iachini, the firm's senior vice president, and Lucas Mantle, vice president.

In total, Vanda estimated that between Friday and the market's close on Tuesday, traders poured roughly $4.25 billion of new capital into U.S. financial markets.

That boosted the trailing five-day retail inflow average to about $1.3 billion a day, levels not seen since the immediate aftermath of the U.S. presidential election in November.