Individual investors once again are fleeing stocks, running scared as the market has dropped from its April highs and experienced high volatility.

Investors temporarily turned bullish during the market’s rally early this year, with stock mutual funds enjoying inflows in January, March and April, according to the Investment Company Institute.

But net outflows resumed in May, The Wall Street Journal reports. Many investors were frightened by the May 6 “flash crash” and the sovereign debt crisis that roiled global markets.

The financial meltdown that began in 2007 greatly damaged faith in equities among small investors. They took money out of stock funds each year from 2007 through 2009. That represents the first three-year period of outflows since 1979-1981.

Individual investors constituted a major player in the stock market’s rise during the 1990s, but institutional investors have dominated the 64 percent rise since April 2009.

"We have gone through two of the worst bear markets since the Great Depression, and it has given investors a better sense of the risks and dangers of investing (in stocks)," Brian Reid, chief economist of the Investment Company Institute, told The Journal.

He was alluding to the bear markets of 2000-2002 and 2007-2009.

CNBC star commentator Jim Cramer says there’s no reason to fear stocks now.

“I think we’ve seen the lows for the year, and I’m a buyer, particularly if we get any pullback of 3 to 5 percent,” he said on the air.