All things being equal this would be true, but the situations are not equal anymore. What's different this time? With more people than ever that have trading accounts, zero fees, and everyone able to trade from their phone whenever they get a price alert notification, it's a lot different than when the average person would check the newspaper to see where trading closed the day before. What I'm saying is that it's no longer solely big money that can make trends. 1 million little robinhood or /r/wallstreetbets traders can make a trend go up and get the large funds to follow now.
Are you calling the robinhood or /r/wallstreetbets crowd, smart money . They are the definition of dumb money. They are the sheep and sheeps get slaughtered. This bear market will make mince meat out of them.
At this point, dumb money can move markets. Have you been over there in the last week or two? Many are posting $100k gains from sub $1k accounts. The front page is littered with these gains. But yeah, 90% of the time they're wrong, but still...there's 1 million of them over there and they all like to jump into the same stock at the same time.
I have seen these screenshots all over reddit, in sure some are real, and even since can be photoshopped.
I dont buy that dumb money can move this market. I can almost guarantee you that 93% of the accounts on robin hood dont even know what a bear market is, they have never even traded in a bear market since 100% of the accounts on Robinhood were opened in the greatest bull market in history.
Agreed not to mention that most orders on robin hood probably don't even make it to the actual market. They are likely traded against Robin Hood or order flow is directed to specific MMs. Retail traders don't have direct access. Brokers like TDAmeritrade had disclosures years ago if you read the fine print that they are entitled to hold orders for seconds in between placing the order and executing the order. Last I checked, you couldn't specify which exchange you wanted to use, say if you wanted max fill, lowest removal liquidity fee, or highest add liquidity rebate. To your point about dumb money, the majority of non-institutional SNAP investors were millennials using Robin Hood aged 18-28 ish. Look at SNAP now.
Well they might not know what a bear market is, but they certainly know what a box spread is! Something that literally can't go tits up! LOL