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Comment by jihadjihad | Hacker News Reader

> For Gen Zs, there seems to be a correlation between gambling and investing—particularly, high-risk investing. In the United States, 61% of surveyed Gen Z investors said they gamble online or in person, compared with 29% of non-investors surveyed. Their propensity for gambling is also associated with riskier investments; 70% of US Gen Z investors who gamble frequently invest in crypto, and 38% invest in non-fungible tokens.

(from the CFA Institute survey cited in TFA, https://rpc.cfainstitute.org/en/research/reports/2023/gen-z-...)

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I was literally going to point this out but missed it in the article.

All of my "Gen Z" family and colleagues invest, certainly, but many "invest" in the same way a millennial invests when they visit Las Vegas.

Translated: They did not experience a stock-market crash yet and the societal memory of risky behaviour resulting in a stock market crash fades.

Well, there haven't been real big, bad crashes in the living memory. And anyway, this isn't what investors are worried about - they are worried about protracted bear markets.

Other than 2008, you mean?

Maybe 2008 doesn't count because that's when they realized you could just print money any time the economy blinked and that would fix everything.

I was a freshman in college the week that crash happened. Called my dad and asked him how he was faring and he offhandedly mentioned losing $250k in 3 days. He wasn't concerned because he was 10+ years from retirement and confident he'd make it all back with a bit of work, but it was still eye opening and it definitely affected how I chose to invest my own money as I got older. I'm much more conservative and hands-off with it than he ever was. I'm still doing well compared to my peers, but I'm behind where thinks I should be.

Counter to the other comment, I was in the middle of college and somehow didn't know about that until years later. After I started working in 2011 at least.

How did you miss it? I graduated in 2009 and it was the only thing people were really talking about after the 08 election wrapped up. It took a lot of people I knew over a year to find work.

Graduated in 2010, decided to take the summer off before looking for work. I don't recall anyone talking about it.

May I ask where you went or what you majored in?

BS in CS in Chicago, but from the suburbs and went back there and didn't work during summer/winter breaks.

I think the CS degree maintained a lot of value in those years and probably kept you away from general Econ talk.

That wasn't a big, bad crash. It was recovered very quickly.

Jobless recovery…IIRC…

Jobs never really came back.

Started in 2007, but that’s a quibble…

> Other than 2008, you mean?

To state the obvious, 2008 was 15 years ago. So someone who was a senior in high school at 18 in 2008, is over 30 today.

So it is true that there's a generation that includes everyone in their 20s and those in their early 30s that have never experienced a significant market crash.

This is a pretty myopic definition of “experienced.” I was in middle and high school through the GFC, and watched my friends and family lose their jobs and worry about their livelihoods.

The topic is stock market investment expectations which is not the same. The market can be going up even as unemployment rages.

The vast majority of middle schoolers were not trading stocks in 2008.

To have experienced one downturn, a trader must've been trading back in 2007/early 2008. It is safe to say most traders in their 20s today were not active traders back in 2007. I'm sure exceptions exist.

Well, from what I've seen the propensity for gambling increases in post-crash poor societies...

Their increased appetite for risk has to do with the world they were handed. Homes are unaffordable, payroll has not kept up with inflation, politics seems hell bent on ending any and all aid programs, to provide funding for tax cuts to people that pay less than I do in taxes already, while making many, many more 0s.

I'm reminded of the midwit meme.

Low end of bell curve: Invest in index funds

Hump of bell curve (midwits): STONKS!!!

High end of bell curve: Invest in index funds

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