In a Sign of the Times, Nasdaq Adds a Retail Tracker to ‘Bring Transparency’

Nasdaq announced it is adding a Retail Trading Activity Tracker, that “brings enhanced transparency into the trading activity of retail investors,” according to a statement. The new feature comes on the heels of one of the most striking phenomena of the pandemic — the rise of retail investors.
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The Retail Trading Activity Tracker tracks stocks and exchange traded funds (ETFs) traded by individuals. A free version of the tracker with the daily top 10 most traded stocks and ETFs by share of retail activity will be available on Nasdaq Data Link and Nasdaq.com, according to the statement.
“The increased participation of individual investors is rapidly changing market dynamics, and the Retail Trading Activity Tracker is the first of its kind to offer general accessibility to consistent and standardized information on retail trading activity,” Oliver Albers, Senior Vice President and Head of Data, Investment Intelligence, Nasdaq, said in the statement.
“The release of this new dataset underlines Nasdaq’s mission of providing greater transparency and empowering the investing public with data-driven innovation. Through the expansion of Nasdaq Data Link and its library of datasets, we aim to level the playing field and make data, and by extension, the financial markets, more transparent and accessible to all,” he continued.
Chris Motola, financial analyst at MerchantMaverick.com, told GOBankingRates that “this follows a trend of increasing retail investor participation in markets.”
“There’s now a niche for tools and interfaces catering to non-institutional investors who may not necessarily be glued to charts all day,” Motola said. “The question, of course, is about the quality of these tools compared to what the big boys are using. Do they close the gap? Or do they exploit retail investors? Time will tell.”
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The tracker will be available on the cloud-based Nasdaq Data Link platform and Nasdaq.com and will have data history from 2016 to the present day. A free list of the top ten traded securities will be updated daily with trading data from the previous day, according to the statement.
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