A market with many institutions and few retail investors is promising, as there are not yet many “cart-bearing” participants entering.

When there are few institutional investors and many retail traders, it’s a bad setup—because everyone’s already here to carry the cart. You can’t expect institutions to lift retail’s load, right? Sure, institutions might miss out initially, then buy back in at higher prices from retail, handing retail a fat profit—but that scenario hasn’t happened yet.