Retail investors vs. institutional investors: Bridging the divide

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Different resources, different goals.

© montego6, Vincenzo/stock.adobe.com; Photo illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The financial markets can accommodate almost everyone, whether you are a young meme-stock trader buying a fractional share of stock through an app-based broker, or the manager of a hedge fund worth billions. However, they don’t accommodate everyone equally.

Financial regulators sort market participants into two broad classes: retail and institutional. It’s a measure of account size, not sophistication, but larger investors do tend to be more sophisticated than smaller ones.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, defines an institutional account in Rule 4512(c) as:

All other accounts are considered to be “retail.” The reason for the distinction is to ensure that broker-dealer firms don’t take advantage of less knowledgeable investors. For example, FINRA Rule 2210 goes into great detail about how member firms need to obtain approvals and keep records on communications with retail investors. (It also expands the definition of institutional investor to include government entities and retirement plans.)

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also has regulations that affect how retail investors are treated by brokerage firms and investment advisors. Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) is designed to ensure that retail investors are given enough information to make good investment decisions.

Given the types of accounts that fall into the institutional bucket—hedge funds, private equity and private credit groups, and managers of pension funds and endowments, for example—it shouldn’t be surprising that institutional investors have greater resources than retail investors. They can hire analysts, subscribe to pricey research and data services, and purchase computing power to optimize their decision-making and trading. Professionals who don’t deliver may lose clients or their jobs, giving them extra incentives to do well.

Of course, institutions can and do mess up on occasion. In general, though, they do a better job, and that’s why market pundits often make snide comments about “those retail investors.” Academic research consistently shows that retail investors make expensive mistakes when trading. For example:

You may not make the expensive mistakes that most retail investors do, but the evidence is strong: Retail investors are not as good at investing as institutions are. That’s why the regulators create rules designed to protect retail investors.

If you’re reading this to learn about the difference between institutional and retail investors, you probably fall into the retail category. That doesn’t mean much, except that your brokerage firm and/or financial advisor will use more care in communicating with you than it would with an institutional client.

You might feel like you’re missing out on certain deals, too. That’s because you are. One reason why some legends of investing post such great performances is that they’re able to take advantage of opportunities that other investors cannot.

Warren Buffett, the long-time CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is an excellent example. He has clear standards for investments that many retail (and institutional) investors have studied and applied with great success. Anyone can read his annual shareholder letters to see how he makes decisions. But one of his greatest trades was putting $5 billion into Goldman Sachs at the request of the U.S. Treasury Department to help stabilize the investment bank during the 2008 financial crisis. No matter how closely you follow Warren Buffett’s precepts, you would never be offered that deal. He was in the right place, at the right time, with a very large bank account.

Some investment types (particularly alternative investments, or “alts”) involve complex, hard-to-value assets with long projected payout periods, and thus are subject to minimum holding periods (“lockups”). For these reasons, certain alts can be accessed only by accredited investors—those who meet specific income and/or net worth requirements.

Financial regulations are intended, in part, to protect retail investors from being misled into inappropriate transactions. Retail investors tend to make a lot of mistakes; they don’t need help from unscrupulous brokers to lose money.

In a way, today is the best—and worst—time to be a retail investor. There’s never been more information available at your fingertips—company fundamentals, technical indicators, zero-commission trading, and real-time business news. But all this analysis and access can lead to confusion, overtrading, or worse—following the FOMO herd in and out of trades.

The wild card is education. Britannica Money wants you to be educated—sophisticated, if you will—so you can make better decisions about investments. Take time to learn about investing so you won’t be one of the retail investors scorned in market commentaries. And as an added bonus, you’ll invest with the confidence that you’re giving yourself (and your portfolio) the best possible odds of a solid future.