Speculative trades all unwinding together | 06 Feb 2026 | Quick Quant Charts | Societe Generale

Highly speculative trading has dominated the investment landscape over the last six months, with investors attracted by the strong momentum in often highly volatile assets.

We highlighted in November, the explosion in option volumes in US small caps and how it was focused mainly on the most volatile names, which in turn tended to be also some of the lowest quality names in the index. This dynamic was painful for systematic quant investors, would typically do the polar opposite.

This speculative trading encapsulated all kind of different trades from loss-making small caps, bitcoin and silver to a variety of eclectic themes such as Drone producers and Uranium miners. This are now all reversing at the same time. This is probably healthy for the markets long-term, but painful for those (often retail) speculators short-term.