Individual investors are taking some of their chips off the table. Retail traders have piled out of hardware stocks and other artificial-intelligence shares in recent days, according to separate reports from JPMorgan and Vanda Research.

Those who sold earlier this week might be kicking themselves. Chip stocks are among the market's biggest winners today, with the PHLX Semiconductor index up more than 8%.

-- The JPMorgan report showed that weekly outflows from tech ETFs were the second-highest on record. Vanda analysts wrote that it's the most significant single-stock selling streak since 2020.

-- For the most part, selling was concentrated in stocks like Sandisk, Micron and Marvell Technology-shares that saw eye-popping gains in April or May, only to tumble from those heights as the summer wore on. Sandisk is down roughly 46% from its all-time highs, despite hefty gains in Thursday trading. Micron has dropped about 30%.

-- Everyday traders aren't backing away from the equities market, Vanda analysts argued. They're just getting pickier. That could create some problems if other investors start selling-though it doesn't seem like we need to worry about that today.