According to Vanda Research, on Wednesday, during a large-scale sell-off of tech stocks, retail investors experienced the largest single-day stock selling since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This market research firm stated that less than an hour remained until the close on Thursday, and retail investors had already sold a net of $338 million worth of individual stocks. The institution pointed out that for this group, which is known for buying at low points and keeping their funds in the market, this represents the largest single-day outflow of capital since March 2020.

At the time of this sell-off, the stock market was experiencing a significant pullback, with traders withdrawing from technology stocks. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted by 1,800 points, almost erasing all of the gains that occurred after the mid-term elections; the Nasdaq Composite Index fell into a correction zone.

In a report, the institution stated: "During a typical downtrend, retail investors tend to buy at lower prices. Today, this buying activity has essentially disappeared among individual stocks."

The institution pointed out that the remaining buying interest is mainly concentrated on leveraged products, such as ProShares UltraPro QQQ (which offers triple the performance of the NASDAQ 100 index) – as well as the Direxion Daily Sem token issuance nductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL), which is designed to track the trends in the semiconductor sector.

The report states: "This appears to be a rare case of a buyer's strike, which collided with forced selling."

– CNBC’s Nick Wells has also made contributions to this article.