How Baby Boomers are cashing in on meme stocks
Baby Boomers and Generation X are making money on meme stocks, while millennials are losing money on average, according to analysis from Openmarkets Group.
The analysis covered 11 meme stocks - stocks whose share prices skyrocketed due to social media hype on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook - not fundamentals.
Based on an evenly weighted basket of the 11 stocks, investors over 40 would have experienced an average gain of 1.29%, according to Openmarkets, with these stocks comprising a total of 3.8% of the share of their total trades.
This is compared to investors under 40, who would have experienced an average loss of 1.93%, with these stocks comprising 5.14% of their total trades.
This means that the younger and less experienced traders who were acting with two times as much risk, their return was 2.5 times worse.
Millennials were generally more likely to be duped and trade on the hyped status of these stocks, compared to their older counterparts.
The 11 stocks selected for the analysis were 88 Energy (88E), Creso Pharma (CPH), Douugh (DOU), Lake Resources (LKE), Brainchip (BRN), Vulcan Energy (VUL), Digital Wine Ventures (DW8), Zip Co (Z1P), Cirralto (CRO), Mesoblast (MSB), and Latin Resources (LRS).
"With all the hype around meme stocks, it is no surprise that the younger traders and investors are getting caught up and caught out," says Openmarkets chief executive Ivan Tchourilov.
"And considering we are seeing the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history; this is a very worrying trend. We would advise caution, and for investors to research, seek professional advice, and gain experience before trying to time the market or make quick gains, especially in meme stocks.
"This opens up a significant need for scalable online advice solutions that can be provided to online investors in the comfort of their own homes by well-informed and experienced advisers, brokers, and fintechs."
To develop this analysis, Openmarkets took an anonymised population of 600 customers from its Opentrader trading platform and assessed their buys and sells. The split by age was 51% over 40 and 49% under 40.
This article first appeared on Financial Standard
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