Retail investors became the biggest losers after a Wall Street rout hit AI and semiconductor stocks overnight. Data showed individuals bought shares like SanDisk and TSMC last week just before prices fell. The Nasdaq 100 index fell 2.9% on Thursday, marking its biggest single-day drop since June amid market concerns.

The biggest loser of the rout that took place in the AI, semiconductor, memory chip stocks on Wall Street overnight has turned out to be the retail population, who spent all of last week loading up on these stocks after a recent bout of selling.

According to JPMorgan, individual investors increased their buying of chipmaker stocks along with companies that provide neocloud services like CoreWeave and also those stocks that produce memory devices. All of this was done by slowing down the purchase of the Magnificent Seven stocks.

Buying of single stock tech shares also reached their highest level since the first signs of the unwinding began in July, according to the JPMorgan note.

Wall Street, particularly the tech-heavy indices had a sharp sell-off on Thursday as concerns over AI spending and disappointing results from Meta and Tesla, coupled with rising oil prices, pummeled most of these companies, barring Apple and Netflix. The Nasdaq 100 index fell 2.9% on Thursday, which is the biggest single-day fall since June. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 6.7% overnight, dragging the index down to the lowest level in three months.

SanDisk Corp., TSMC, Nebius Group NV were the shares most purchased by retail investors last week, according to JPMorgan. SanDisk shares fell 8.5% overnight, while those of TSMC and Nebius Group fell 4.5% and 7.2% respectively.

SpaceX shares were fourth on the list of most purchased stocks by retail investors, but those were also sold off on Thursday after the 8% jump seen the previous day after its results.

The JPMorgan note goes on to add that the retail demand was even stronger for technology Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). Inflows in these ETFs reached their second-highest level on record. Last Friday also marked the largest single-day inflow into tech ETFs on record, with VanEck Semiconductor ETF drawing the highest demand.

While Retail traders chose to buy the megacap tech shares since July, their shift towards these names is indicative that they are not abandoning the AI trade, but just broadening their horizons.

According to Bank of America, companies in the S&P 500 IT index are expected to post earnings growth of 66% for the third quarter, trailing only energy and communication services.

Overall retail flows remained subdued for the week, JPMorgan’s data showed.