Survey: attitudes of millennials and baby boomers with respect to investing

Water Cooler
#1

This is a fairly comprehensive survey that compares attitudes of millennials and baby boomers with respect to investing.

http://tinyurl.com/z5m3tlh

Some highlights:

  1. 42% of millennials think they are “very knowledgeable about investing” vs 17% baby boomers.

  2. When asked how much money they will need to save to be comfortable in retirement, the median and mode are around $1 million.

  3. 65% of both groups apparently have Financial Advisors.

  4. Wealth distribution seems the same between people in this survey between the two age groups. So I guess they chose a rich population of millennials.

  5. On average, people have an 8/10 confidence in their FA to manage their portfolio.

  6. 71% of millennials think next 1-3 years will be bull market (defined as “better than historical average”). This compares to 50% of baby boomers.

Conclusion: robo advisors still not taking all jobs. Millennials are bunch of a holes.

#2

I think the subject line length broke the water cooler page.

LOL on point number 1.

#3

I tried to move the link into the body of your post, but the link URL was longer than the maximum thread title, so it got chopped.

Try going to tinyurl.com and you can shrink the long URL to something more manageable.

This might be a good solution in the future. TinyURLs are short enough you can nearly recite them from memory.

#4

That’s a good protip. I put a tiny url there until such futuristic time when technology allows pasting into normal comment boxes.

#5

Link not working. To me millennials seem totally clueless about investing, and really everything.

LOL @ the next 1-3yrs being a bull market. This view illustrates their 1) low math ability, 2) lack of diligence researching basic facts, 3) hyper-positive (unrealistic) expectations.

#6

crying

#7

Link working now…interesting. If this is accurate it confirms stereotypes.

Short-termism (ADHD) – Millennials are more concerned with short-term fluctuations, and make investment changes more often. Distrust in specialists – We always hear about this trend toward skepticism of specialists, and trust in random (mis)information. This confirms Millennials get a lot of investment advice from friends, social media and blogs…much more so than Boomers. Distorted view of abilities – The fact is the public is NOT knowledgable about investments. Boomers have a more accurate view of reality, only 17% claim to be knowledgable. Millennials have a distorted view of their own knowledge, 42% believe they are knowledgeable on investments. But if they are so knowledgable, why on Q14 did so many answer “put the money in a bank savings account” (at 0.5% interest??), Boomers say invest it. Expectations – They have higher expectations, more confident they will reach their retirement goals, very confident in the stock market.

#8

I found you posting this one pretty ironic

#9

title of article should be: young people are stupid, overconfident and inexperienced by nature.

this is not a generational thing. it is a young person thing. we’ll see the same article in 30 years comparing millennials to Generation Terror or Generation Trump or whatever it will be called.

also, i’m sure many are particularly overconfident right now because the market has gone straight up for 6 years so most don’t know any better. experience tames overconfidence.

#10

i always enjoy when you break down the different biases in things

#11

You guys are being a little hard on millennials because you’re looking at their attitudes from your frane of reference, not theirs. For example:

Investing to you is buying stock, bonds, real estate, derivatives, etc. Investing to millennials is buying the latest iPhone.

$1 MM for retirement for you seems woefully inadequate, because you actually plan to pay for stuff. Millennials have been led to believe that almost everything will be free in the future, so $1 MM is plenty.

You think of a bull market as financial markets increasing in value. Millennials think a bull market is their parents upgrading the speed of their internet and maybe putting a WiFi signal booster in the basement.

#12

Naw, I have an accurate view. Outperformed for 10yrs first, then observed that I have superior analystical abilities. Different from believing you are good at something despite all evidence to the contrary. I keep wondering who the idiots are on the other end of my trades, now I know – the Millennials LOL!

Yes, they are younger. But no, you can not know “it is not a generational thing”.

#13

If this survey was done in the 60-70s when baby boomers were hitting their adult years I’m sure the results would have been very similar. I’m so sick of reading about millenials and their purchasing behaviour. Remember, parents hated the beatles and elvis.

#14

^ The results could not have been similar because the survey could not have included questions on social media and blogs, since they did not exist yet.

The environment HAS changed (fact), and the animal has changed to fit the new environment (almost certainly true).

#15

^ o geez.

#16

I can post on an anon internet board that I outperformed for 10 years too! Doesn’t make it truth! While I’m at it I make 6 figures a year in muni bond income. It may not be 7 figures but we work with what we have.

#17

Welcome back Pure Alpha. devil

#18

But, we know the original purealpha was “recalled” due to certain things that went sour. This is most likely another employee of the Chinese state propaganda department.

#19

See years of time-stamped posts, being right over and over again, been on here since 2002. Unless I didn’t actually trade on my calls I beat the market, but I did trade on them.

Now back to the topic! It’s going to be really easy to keep outperforming. In the US the institutional investors drive the market, these guys have no choice but to eventually hire these clueless millennials (people die, gotta hire someone). Imagine being a trader in the movie Idiocracy, LOL. Like taking candy from a bunch of babies…