NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- It might be a telltale sign that, just as the U.S. economy starts adding jobs again and the Dow Jones Industrial Average nears 11,000, retail investors have been making a quiet comeback into the market.

Steady retail trading activity since the start of the year from online brokers TD Ameritrade AMTD, +1.05% , Schwab SCHW, +1.25% , or E-Trade ETFC, +2.28% , and positive flows into equity mutual funds over the past several weeks do point to rising participation, be it from day traders or the broad investing public.

It's perhaps more telling, however, that the numbers remain subdued, along with the cheerleading of stocks so common at every level before the financial crisis.

On Monday, as the Dow industrials DJIA, +1.19% toyed with the magic 11,000 level, the headlines on CNBC were fairly infrequent, and the pitch of commentators' voices semi-contained -- all relatively speaking -- just as stocks meandered around in a muted celebration of the March U.S. jobs report and a jump in an index of the service sector of the economy.

Only one research note in this reporter's mailbox promised Dow 12,000 was now in sight.

These muted signs are as good as any that "irrational exhuberance" is still some distance away for stocks. They're also a good sign that various commentators -- be they brokers, analysts or economists at investment banks -- aren't catering to the broad investing public as much as they did before the financial crisis.

There are obvious good reasons for this. Trillions of dollars of investor money vanished into thin air during the crisis, and the financial hardships and trauma of the public cannot be simply wished away.

And while stocks, as measured by the broad S&P 500 index SPX, +0.82% , have rallied 75% since hitting 12-year lows in March 2009, the move has taken place with shell-shocked retail investors largely absent. They shouldn't be expected to return massively any time soon, either.

Over the past two decades, a stock rally of this magnitude without the participation of retail investors would have been inconceivable, says Vincent Deluard, global equity strategist at TrimTabs, a research firm that tracks investment flows.

"This is very, very unusual," he says. "Normally, retail investors buy when markets are rising. It's a big selling point. But this time, people expecting that a big wall of money is going to come and sweep the markets are mistaken."

According to the Investment Research Institute, a research group representing the investment fund industry, equity funds saw estimated inflows of $294 million for the week ended March 24, representing the fifth straight week of inflows.

For the whole month of March, equity mutual funds saw net inflows of $11.7 billion, according to TrimTabs. That compares with inflows of $110 million in February.

But putting things in perspective, it's still a far cry from the average $40 billion monthly inflows experienced during the go-go days of the 1990s, which saw an explosion in 401(k)s and mutual-fund investing, says TrimTabs' Deluard.

Even as stocks began to recover from the Internet stock bubble, inflows never came back to such heights. If they rise again now after the latest crisis -- should the economic recovery and jobs growth continue -- "we eventually might reach an average of $10 billion a month, but it'd be surprised if we do more than that," the TrimTabs analyst says.

Volatility, as measured by the VIX VIX, -2.16% , the CBOE Market Volatility Index otherwise known as the market's fear gauge, has sunk back to pre-crisis levels, another reason why day traders seeking risk aren't rushing to make bets via online brokers.

Change in equity culture?

Beyond the fresh trauma of the crisis and recession, the primary reason why more retail investors won't embrace stocks as before is due to demographics, according to Deluard.

In the 1990s, baby boomers reached their maximum earnings potential, but they now need less equities and more fixed-income.

For the younger generations, still shouldering student and other household debt, "it's going to be an uphill battle" to invest in equities, Deluard says.

This is especially true given that post-boomer generations have now seen "stocks drop more than 50% twice in the past 10 years, which is not inspiring," he says.

For the time being, professionals at investment banks, funds, and other investing institutions, have been and remain firmly in control of this low-volume market.

Unlike day traders, portfolio managers tend to buy in large chunks and rather infrequently and most professional investors tend to look to future expectations. Long-term retail investors, by contrast, tend to look in the rearview mirror.

This partly explains the oft-mentioned dissonance of the 2009 low-volume rally taking place while the economy was mired in recession.

Meanwhile, bond and hybrid mutual funds, which have performed so well during the crisis, remain much more appealing in the retail rearview mirror.