Here’s a hoot. TD Ameritrade says Cryptocurrencies are the ‘Greatest Opportunity’ to Get Millennials to Trade.
- The cryptocurrency market may be just what is needed to lure millennials into trading, TD Ameritrade chief market strategist JJ Kinahan told CNBC on Monday.
- “People complain that we haven’t gotten millennials to trade. Maybe this isn’t the product I’d like people to start with, but this is the greatest opportunity,” he said.
- Over the past year, bitcoin — the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap — is up more than 1,500 percent. Ripple, meanwhile, ripped 35,000 percent last year alone.
I can think of no better way to get a generation to swear off stocks than losing their asses on cryptos, having recently watched their parents and friends parents lose their houses in the housing bubble.
As an aside, the above CNBC link contains an autoplay video kicking off with an ad. Most Bloomberg articles do the same.
I await Google’s ad policy that is supposed to start blocking auto-play ads in February.
Meanwhile …
Here’s how to buy Ripple pic.twitter.com/M64e0W8T3m
— Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) January 8, 2018
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
@RSM
In the US as of now, I’m sure you’re mostly correct. The rob-the-productive-hand-the-loot-out-to-the-connected-via-asset-appreciation racket is still somewhat functioning over here, so it’s still relatively easy to sell the saps on the nonsense that wealth derives from “trading” and “investing.”
But just as with other people’s money, you eventually run out of other people’s productive output. As is currently on display in Venezuela. Then the connected runs out of options, but to move the theft above ground and leave it less obfuscated. Which will make harder-to-steal payment mechanisms and wealth stores more attractive. Doubly so once the rot reaches the point where even the rank and file among the security services are seeing their take home cut, to feed those even more connected than them. Nothing hollows out an underpaid (by own estimation) jackboot army, like the ability of individual enforcers to take bribes entirely anonymously.
By the way, if auto-plays ads bother you, try the browser add-in Ghostery. My brother recommended it, and I haven’t seen anything autoplay since I added it.
This is a very sobering post, and I suspect it is correct. My niece, a millennial, would never trade stocks, but has some bitcoins. If they lose big, they may never trade stocks, which would be very bearish for stocks for a long time.
3,500% though Mish. Of course it’s a speculative bubble, but as long as you know you’re playing with fire and might lose 100%, why not take a shot?
“People complain that we haven’t gotten millennials to trade.” Which people are complaining? Answer: the people employed at brokerages, exchanges and clearing firms.
“People complain that we haven’t gotten millennials to trade.” Which people are complaining?
I am old enough to remember when a brokerage firm advocated speculation the push back was severe. What a strange society be have become.
Stuki: I agree with your sentiment, but I don’t believe millenials are involved with cryptos for this reason. Otherwise they would also show interest in precious metals – given that they serve the same purpose you mention without the very real risk vanishing into thin air over night. In fact, most of my fellow millenials involved in cryptos are speculating, and are doing so with disposable income. They realize it is risky, but like their boomer parents (houses), and grandparents (dot coms), they’re just trying to take a shortcut to wealth.
Bitcoin, equities, what’s the difference. Neither one of them have a price that is remotely connected with an intrinsic value based on the present value of a long duration stream of cash flows. One of them is worth zero on that metric, the other about 50% of its current market price.
All it takes is a few millennials to make some profit, tweet it, and the herd will follow.
Cryptocurrencies, properly anonymized, is a way for millennials to avoid being robbed to cover up for the fact that their parents made promises to each other they have no intentions, nor ability, to keep. Sitting around like monkeys pretending to have some worthvile opinion about “this going up and that going down”, creates less value than taking a dump. Cryptocurrencies are no different from stocks bonds, funds nor houses in that regard. But shifting resources, away from the command of leeching governments and their self-righteous supporters, and towards young individuals, are almost guaranteed to be a net win.
Difficult for a young person to assess the forward looking value of a particular coin or token.