The investment veterans at DataTrek Research put forth an interesting theory in a recent brief that sheds more light on an interesting phenomenon in the markets right now: the buying role of retail investors.

Specifically, DataTrek’s Jessica Rabe wrote that some mom and pop investors might be day-trading the market more because casinos professional sports have shut down and casinos have closed.

Across certain segments of the “regular people” investment landscape — Vanguard and Fidelity, for example — there hasn’t been much in the way of panic selling as many customers seem to have internalized the “stay the course” messaging that followed the last financial crisis (and was conspicuously displayed on investment websites). In fact, many of these retail investors have bought equities as markets plunged.

For Robinhood, there seems to be even more activity — and on the buying side. A Robinhood spokesperson told Yahoo Finance that the company has seen “historic participation and activity” on its platform and customers trading at record volumes; March daily trade volumes were around three times that of Q4’s daily volume — which has continued into April.

The company also said that it has seen “significant interest in ‘buying the dip,’” as well as many first time investors opening accounts in March.

One explanation

Rabe called the “tremendous rush of retail investors into US equities over the last 8 weeks” one of the “most surprising financial market features of the COVID crisis.” She pointed out that this didn’t really happen in 2008 and probably not in any turbulent market going back to 1987.

“Retail tends to sell sudden shocks that cause incremental unemployment because, well, fear is a powerful motivator to action and many investors want liquidity in case they lose their jobs,” said Rabe. In other words, when the economy is awful, even though people might want to buy cheap, they also need money to make rent, pay tuition, and live their lives.

DataTrek looked at data from Robinhood users, from a data aggregator called Robintrack that looks at holdings in accounts. Compared to Vanguard and Fidelity, Robinhood is probably more likely to be home to active traders and holders in individual stocks, given the company’s original value proposition of $0 trades and stock-focused business.

For the Robinhood cohort, there’s been a huge upswing in people who are holding its biggest names, which are Aurora Cannabis, Ford, GE, Disney, and GoPro.

These are not the most held companies, nor are they companies that garner the most market interest. (You can see the most searched for stocks on Yahoo Finance here and get more information with Yahoo Finance Premium.)