retail

In September, U.S. retail sales increased by 0.8% month-on-month, higher than the expected 0.3%. The previous value was revised from 1.2% to 1.1%.

Bitget has launched the FASTRETAILING stock perpetual contract. This contract is settled in USDT, supports up to 20 times leverage, and allows trading 24/7. As of now, Bitget supports a total of 356 stock perpetual contract underlying assets.

The CEO of the stock and cryptocurrency trading platform Robinhood, Vlad Tenev, stated in a recent interview that a significant portion of retail trading is expected to be initiated by AI in the future. The Agent can monitor the market around the clock and handle trades in various assets such as stocks, options, and cryptocurrencies, but most funds may still be held long-term.In May of this year, Robinhood allowed users to trade through third-party AI Agents via MCP, and at the end of September, it announced the direct integration of Agents into the App, with over 150,000 customers having opened dedicated trading accounts at that time. Currently, funds are still restricted through independent accounts; the Agent can view users' other account information but can only place orders within the dedicated account, and funds must be actively transferred by the user. Tenev stated that technically, it is not difficult to directly access the main account, but the company has chosen to gradually loosen permissions.In terms of approval settings, the built-in Agent requires users to approve each transaction by default, but this setting can be manually turned off; external Agents accessed through MCP do not require per-transaction approval by default, and users must enable approval themselves. Tenev also envisions allowing retail investors to deploy trading strategies on servers close to exchanges to reduce order delays, and hopes that ordinary investors can use such infrastructure without needing to understand data centers and network engineering. Robinhood has not yet provided this service and has not announced a timeline for its launch.

According to the official website of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on October 9, 2026, the SEC officially sued Linqto's former executives William Sarris and Joseph Endoso, accusing them of committing fraud by selling equity in pre-IPO unicorn companies to retail investors through their online platform.Between 2021 and 2024, Linqto's subsidiary sold over $430 million in special purpose vehicles (SPV) to retail investors. The SEC accused the two of: falsely reporting prices below market value (with almost all being above fair value), falsely claiming that stocks were "sold out," pretending that prices were dynamically set by algorithms (when they were actually manually priced), and publicly claiming compliance while knowing they were violating regulations. Additionally, they were accused of illegally operating an unregistered investment company and selling unregistered securities to non-accredited investors.The SEC seeks to impose an injunction against the two, recover illegal gains and interest, impose civil penalties, and prohibit them from serving as executives or directors of public companies in the future. The case is being investigated by the SEC's San Francisco Regional Office, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI.

According to Fortune, retail proprietary trading startup Vest Labs announced the completion of a $13 million seed round of financing, led by Portal Ventures, with some executives from Citadel Securities, BlackRock, and KKR participating as individuals. The company did not disclose its post-financing valuation.Vest allows eligible traders to use the company's funds to trade perpetual contracts in real markets around the clock, with traders able to retain up to 80% of the profits, while the remainder goes to the company. The company stated that compared to some retail proprietary trading firms that rely on charging fees for simulated trading accounts, this model allows Vest to benefit from the success of traders rather than betting on their failure.The financing will be used to develop a mobile application, expand the current team of 22 people, and increase the variety of assets available for trading around the clock. According to Vest's own disclosure, as of late September, 26% of the approximately 27,000 traders on the platform had received cash payments, with monthly active traders and trading volume both increasing by over 300% month-over-month.

According to Bloomberg, the office of a South Korean lawmaker cited data from the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea, indicating that retail investors in South Korea are expected to lose approximately 2.3 trillion won (about 1.7 billion USD) from May 27 to August 14 by tracking single-stock leveraged ETFs and note products related to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.Since July, South Korean regulators have implemented measures such as temporarily banning the listing of new leveraged single-stock products, raising minimum cash margin requirements, and strengthening investor education to mitigate the risks associated with these products.

According to Cointelegraph, the nonprofit financial reform advocacy organization Better Markets criticized the CFTC's proposed framework for retail crypto trading, arguing that the protections for investors would be weaker than those provided by the SEC. The CFTC publicly solicited comments on the framework for retail crypto trading involving margin, leverage, or financing on Monday.Benjamin Schiffrin, the Director of Securities Policy at Better Markets, stated that unlike the SEC, the CFTC lacks a mandate for investor protection, as its mission is to regulate commodity and derivatives markets that have historically been dominated by large institutions with minimal retail participation. Therefore, the CFTC is the wrong agency to oversee retail customer crypto asset trading.Better Markets also questioned the CFTC's claim regarding Congressional intent to allow it to regulate such trading. Schiffrin pointed out that the statutory authority cited by the CFTC was originally established to address fraud in leveraged precious metals trading and does not indicate Congressional intent for the agency to become the primary regulator of retail crypto.He also criticized the proposed framework for potentially allowing connections between market participants, which had previously led to the collapse of FTX. Schiffrin simultaneously condemned CFTC Chairman Mike Selig's statements about making the U.S. the global crypto capital, stating that he failed to explain why this would be a good thing and noted that crypto still lacks real use cases after 18 years.Nate Geraci, President of NovaDius Wealth Management, countered that the crypto industry is simply seeking clear rules, and if Congress cannot provide them, the CFTC and SEC may have to take on that responsibility.

Galaxy Research released a report titled "The Behavior of Polymarket Traders," with data compiled by Stork, based on approximately 2.9 million retail accounts defined by trading frequency on the Polymarket international platform. The report states that since its launch in 2020, the platform has facilitated 1.27 billion orders, involving 3.07 million wallets, with a nominal amount of 82.8 billion USD. 125,429 accounts that placed more than 50 orders on active days were excluded, accounting for 4.1% of accounts but contributing 80.8% of orders and 41% of nominal trading volume.The report shows that 69.2% of retail accounts are below breakeven, with total losses of 338.9 million USD. The median retail account lost about 3 USD, with half of the accounts falling between -36.64 USD and +0.40 USD. The proportion of accounts that did not trade again within 30 days after a loss is 15.2%, while after a profit it is 6.1%. The excluded automated accounts collectively made a profit of 246.8 million USD. The median position for profit-makers is 13.96 USD, while for loss-makers it is 10 USD.44.1% of traders concentrated over 60% of their activity on a single theme. Sports specialists account for 47% of all specialists, with a profit ratio of 25.1%, the lowest among all themes; technology and science specialists have a profit ratio of 41.2%. The report covers the entire history of the international platform and mentions that the platform will introduce taker fees in early 2026. At a price point of 50 cents, crypto market takers pay 1.75 USD for a position of 100 shares or 50 USD, accounting for approximately 3.5% of the invested capital.

The Financial Services Commission of South Korea has proposed regulatory guidelines for the issuance and trading of security tokens, intending to allow stocks, bonds, funds, and certain fractional investment securities to be issued and circulated in token form. The relevant regulatory framework is scheduled to take effect on February 4, 2027.According to the proposal, securities token issuance companies that directly manage client accounts must have a paid-in capital of at least 4 billion Korean Won and be equipped with dedicated compliance and technical personnel. The revision of capital market regulations will also introduce an over-the-counter trading license for bonds and limit individual investors' annual net purchases at each over-the-counter exchange to within 100 million Korean Won.The proposal will be open for public consultation from Friday until November 11, after which it will enter the approval process. South Korea previously announced a roadmap to advance the transition of securities issuance and trading to distributed ledger infrastructure in three phases.

Lloyds Banking Group and Visa completed their first stablecoin settlement test, settling a total of $750,000 in Visa payment obligations using USDC within 7 days, with funds arriving in as little as one hour.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed a reform plan aimed at expanding the channels for individual investors to participate in the private market. The proposal allows registered investment advisors to charge a performance fee of up to 20% based on fund performance, attracting more private management institutions to serve individual investors.SEC Chairman Paul Atkins stated that he hopes to explore ways to expand individual investor participation in the private market while preventing fraud and misconduct. The SEC also proposed to broaden the definition of "accredited investors."

Analyst Darkfost stated that the demand from Bitcoin retail investors (trading volume of $0 - $10,000) has rapidly disappeared during this round of BTC price increase, with a 30-day change rate shifting from over 17% to -3.5%.

Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research Department's South Korea stock analyst Chris Cha stated in a report on September 23 that KOSPI has the conditions for a short-term tactical breakout, but the continuous flow of liquidity from South Korean retail investors into the cryptocurrency market will make the index's subsequent upward movement more reliant on foreign capital and local institutions reconfiguring. The report noted that concerns about the Federal Reserve's interest rates have been partially digested by the market, and risk appetite has shifted towards proxy AI themes.The report pointed out that South Korean memory chips provide fundamental support, with fourth-quarter DRAM contract prices expected to grow double digits quarter-on-quarter, and the ramp-up of HBM4 capacity will continue to limit the supply of standard server DRAM. Samsung Electronics' large shareholder returns, continuous buying by institutions, and foreign capital turning into net buying may drive KOSPI towards the resistance zone of 7000 to 7200 points.The report also indicated that the capacity of local South Korean retail investors to absorb has weakened. After Bitcoin returned to $85,000, cryptocurrency trading in South Korea has heated up. According to DefiLlama data cited in the report, Upbit's single-day spot trading volume on June 13 was approximately $770 million, which rose to $1.817 billion on September 22, an increase of about 136%. Based on the total trading volume of $3.27 billion on that day across South Korea's five major trading platforms, Upbit alone accounted for over half. Goldman Sachs believes this will make KOSPI more reliant on foreign and institutional buying in the future, and October is a critical window to test whether foreign capital will continue to increase its investment in South Korean semiconductor and AI assets.

According to CoinDesk, while Wall Street giants like JPMorgan and Citi have processed huge amounts of money through blockchain, tokenized payment services are still primarily aimed at institutional clients and licensed networks. JPMorgan's Kinexys blockchain platform has processed over $3 trillion, and Citi Token Services handles billions of dollars in cross-border payments daily, neither of which is open to regular savings users.The UK challenger bank Monument Bank is attempting to fill this gap. The bank has a balance sheet size of approximately $2.4 billion and plans to tokenize up to £250 million (about $335 million) of retail customer deposits on the privacy public chain Midnight. These deposits will still earn interest, be fully backed by the bank, can be exchanged 1:1 for pounds, and are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The project utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to protect customer data and meet regulatory requirements, allowing users to engage without needing to understand or directly use cryptocurrencies.Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that most tokenization projects are currently internal bank projects and have not yet truly allowed retail users to participate directly in tokenization. In the long term, the bank plans to offer fractional private equity, tokenized structured products, and Lombard loans to customers through regular banking applications under compliance, and is considering licensing related infrastructure to other banks through its subsidiary Monument Technology.

In August, U.S. retail sales increased by 1.2% month-on-month, higher than the expected 0.8%. The previous value was revised from -0.6% to -0.5%.

On September 14, the Japanese stock market's real estate, retail, and IT service sectors performed actively. According to Gate platform's Japanese stock market data, Rand (8918) rose by 10.00%, currently reported at approximately 0.07 USD; Kobe Bussan (3038) increased by 6.35%, currently reported at approximately 21.00 USD; SHIFT (3697) saw an increase of 6.05%, currently reported at approximately 6.00 USD.

According to CoinDesk, London challenger bank Monument Bank has postponed its £250 million (approximately $330 million) project to tokenize UK retail bank deposits for several months, as the bank has been unable to find a local crypto custodian that meets the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) standards and can handle zero-knowledge privacy proofs.Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that the bank originally planned to tokenize customer deposits on the privacy public chain Midnight, hoping to launch the world's first tokenized deposits two months ago, but it is now expected to take another two months, with a retail customer launch in November. To meet regulatory requirements, the bank expanded its search for custodial partners to overseas, ultimately finding a Canadian custodian approved by the FCA.Midnight is a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain project funded by Charles Hoskinson, which keeps customer information within the Monument system through zero-knowledge proofs while allowing the bank to prove compliance on-chain and provide audit records to regulators. Monument Bank announced the project in March this year, planning to offer tokenized private equity, structured products, and automated Lombard loans to "mass affluent" customers with investable assets ranging from £50,000 to £5 million.Bhandari stated that customer deposits will continue to earn interest, fully backed by Monument, and can be exchanged at a 1:1 ratio for pounds, protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), with a limit of £120,000 per person or company.