John McCrank

NEW YORK (Reuters – Stocks were sold by individual investors on Thursday amid concerns that U.S. Federal Reserve could increase the rate of interest rates hikes in order to curb inflation which has reached a 4-decade-high.

Vanda Research reports that retail investors purchased stocks and exchange traded funds in excess of $2.6 million on Thursday. This was Vanda’s highest ever level of net buying, according to the company. Data goes back as far as January 2014.

The top retail purchases during the selloff, which erased all of the gains from a relief rally on Wednesday when the Fed raised rates by 0.5%, were: the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ASX:), the Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 ETF, and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:).

The tech-heavy QQQ ETFs tracks the, down over 21% so far this year. It was not clear which way it would go next, according to retail investors.

Fourth most popular Thursday retail purchase was ProShares UltraPro QRQ ETF. It corresponds three times (3X daily performance of Nasdaq 100), while sixth was ProShares UltraPro QRQ Short ETF.

This fell 3.6% Thursday and is now down about 13% for the year.