Together or Not at All: What Drives Gen Z to Social Investing?

2002 and 2021 saw a massive influx of new retail and stay-at-home traders, prompted by a combination of lockdowns and lack of entertainment outdoors, causing many to begin looking for entertainment inside their computers. The keywords “Forex” and “Crypto Trading” on Google saw a huge boost in searches as the trends of consumers rapidly moved online. Bitcoin traders had a remarkable year with the price of Bitcoin climbing over 90% in 2021 and Ethereum soaring over 265%. That all paled into insignificance compared to Solana’s gains of 9683%. This created a FOMO (fear of missing out) situation for those who had never traded before. Meme trading also had its moment on the back of this, as an army of new traders got together on the WallStreetBets board on Reddit, to talk up shorted stocks. Their most successful attempts, with AMC and GameStop, led to mind-blowing success, with members quickly boasting about their new Lamborghinis that they had bought as a result. This taste of success led more and more newbies into the trading arena, however, it quickly became clear that as a trader you need more than beginner’s luck to enjoy success. Investing for GenZ and Millenials A perfect storm created by the pandemic and stimulus checks delivered to people by the US and other governments led to more money available for trading for people who had never traded before, most notably GenZ and millennial traders. For these subsets of people, who g...