WhoTrades Live provides thousands of portfolios that you can view, follow, copy, and learn from more broadly. It allows you to invest on your own without being alone in the process and without the large costs associated with outsourcing managing your savings to expensive financial advisors and actively managed products. Recent returns, drawdowns, trade activity, and current holdings are all transparently displayed so you know exactly what type of portfolio, trading style, and risk/reward characteristics you’re following or investing in. (Source: Portfolio Page) Trends in How Americans Invest Millennials – those born roughly between 1980 and 1996 (though there’s not agreement on the exact years) – have seen tangible shifts in how they’ve invested their savings from 2017 to 2018. Last year, this group was much more cautious, holding nearly half their wealth in cash, a quarter in stocks, and a quarter in bonds and alternatives. Alternatives include assets such as housing, art, precious metals, and other non-traditional assets. This year, the trend has shifted different. With confidence restored in stocks after 2017’s performance (after two flattish years in 2015 and the first ten months of 2016), stocks are now nearly 50% of the average millennial’s portfolio. Alternatives and “other” have also seen a combined 5% increase. All of this increase has come from outflows out of cash, declining down to 21%. Of course, one can argue that this trend is backwards from what might be most logical. Normally when a market goes up it means it’s getting more expensive rather becoming a more attractive investment. With the Federal Reserve withdrawing liquidity from the financial system through increases in short rates and balance sheet run-off, the risk-reward proposition of holding risk assets becomes dampened and generally favors moving out of risk assets and toward safe assets. In terms of gender (of all ages), we don’t see much of a difference in how wealth is invested. Men increased their allocations to stocks slightly – driven by millennial investment behavior, and Generation X (born between 1965 and 1979) to a lesser extent – while women kept allocations flat. Boomers (born between 1944 and 1964) and Silents (approximately 1925-1943) are less active in managing their portfolios year to year. This is largely because they’ve already earned most of the wealth they already have. Accordingly, they kept their allocations relatively flat. What If There Is A 10% Decline in the US Stock Market? What kind of behavior might be expected if there were a 10% decline in the domestic equity market? There are fairly wide divergences in the answer to the question based on generation. Younger individuals are more likely to view it as a buying opportunity. At the same time, millennials are also likely to interpret a decline as a time to sell, especially in the form of selling decliners and selling risk assets more broadly. This goes against the thinking that declining assets are cheaper assets. Older generations are more likely to make no change. As a whole, roughly equal numbers view it as an opportunity to buy (42%) or simply do nothing (40%). On the other hand, 16% would sell. Of that 16%, 6% would sell risky assets, 5% would sell the biggest decliners (against the conventional wisdom that they’re probably becoming cheaper), and 5% would move into cash. Conclusion Whatever you take from these trends, the current trend among the public is to invest more into stocks and more into alternatives (e.g., housing, art, collectibles, other hard assets) and less into cash. As more cash comes off the sidelines from both individuals and corporations (e.g., buybacks, dividends) and goes into risk assets, the market becomes progressively more insecure because it means there will be less liquidity available to catch the market on the break in the event it declines. The WhoTrades Live platform offers a vast menu of options and strategies in how to manage your wealth. Each profile shows full transparency over virtually everything you need to know to make a decision as to whether it fits your personal needs and expectations. This includes returns, drawdowns, performance trends, holdings and percentage allocations, a computer- and/or user-generated synopsis of the trading style, popularity based on follower count, and any relevant trading activity.