Millennials and the stock market

Ezra Klein

Nancy Cook reports that young people -- my people -- are staying out of the stock market. In fact, according to a new report from Merrill Lynch, "affluent millennials and 30-somethings say their tolerance for risky investments is much lower than it was a year ago, rivaled only by people over the age of 65." In other words, the people who should have the highest risk tolerance are now matching the people who should have the lowest risk tolerance.
It's not hard to see why. As Cook says, we're a generation "whose financial coming-of-age has been bookended by the dotcom bubble and the subprime-mortgage meltdown." And I'm no exception: I manage what money I have extremely conservatively, though I'd attribute that at least as much to my profession, which forces me to read and consider every scenario for economic meltdown, as to my age.
Still, I was talking about this with an economist recently and he said something that stuck with me. "If people like you aren't in the market," he mused, "that probably means the market is underpriced, and now is exactly the time to get in."

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