Chicago Tribune (Sunday)

Millennial­s are losing faith in stocks. Here’s what they’re investing in.

- SOURCE: Clint Rainey, Fast Company

In just a little over two decades, millennial­s and Gen Zers are expected to inherit $73 trillion from the baby boomer generation—a historic transfer of U.S. wealth. According to a Bank of America Private Bank survey, the new owners of this money are poised to make some very different decisions about how to invest it.

Embracing alternativ­es. Mostly crypto

Forty-seven percent of younger investors hold digital assets of some kind. In fact, they allocate 15% of their entire portfolio on average to crypto. (It’s a sollid 2% for the older generation.) Older and younger people trust

the same authoritie­s for investment advice: profession­al advisers, crypto experts, or their own online research more than family and friends. Except half of the young people say they turn to social media for “guidance.” A third of them think crypto is a smart long-term investment vehicle, even more (35%) think it will go mainstream by 2025 to 2027, and 64% of them claim they “understand cryptocurr­ency quite well.”

They haven’t totally abandoned tried-and-true investment strategies

Bank of America says a total of 16% of younger investors’

portfolios go toward alternativ­e investment­s—that leaves a whopping 1% parked in something other than crypto, but it’s still something. The investment­s younger people believe present the best growth opportunit­ies (if you eliminate crypto, which is No. 1) are real estate, followed by a tie between private equity and capital directly invested into companies, then ESG funds. Meanwhile, for the older folks, it’s domestic equities, then real estate, emerging markets funds, internatio­nal equities, and direct investment, and finally private equity —crypto comes in ninth.

Younger investors are surprising­ly into art

Sixty-six percent of younger investors own art, versus 23% among the older crowd. Of the current owners, 83% of younger people bought a piece of art in the past year; for older people, it was 53%. Of course, if Gen Zers are collecting art, they’re doing it in a very fleeting, rebellious Gen Z way: Although two-thirds of both groups say they like art for its aesthetic value, once a piece becomes “valuable,” 42% of young people concede they’re “very likely” to sell it, compared to a

quarter of older people.

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