More than that, there’s a demographic problem going on for Wall Street.
The Baby Boomers are retiring, and that means they’re not going to be in equities (as a generation) for that much longer. They’re not in the job market for that much longer, and their IRA and 401(k) money is going to come out of stocks and into less volatile asset classes (eg, bonds, Treasury paper, etc).
The following generation is both numerically smaller, and has much less money to put into the markets. As it is, when I talk to young people, their distrust of large institutions absolutely applies to Wall Street, and they “know” that the markets are rigged. They’ve seen a huge melt-down in 2008. They’ve seen how the markets took 10+ years to regain where they were in the early 2000’s. They’ve heard of how the dot-bomb generation created IPO’s with absolutely no hope of ever making a profit, etc, etc.
There’s no way to convince these kids to invest in the markets. They have no trust in them at all - or even any trust in the concept. How do you tell a kid to “trust the markets” when they saw the US government turn itself inside-out to rescue the big banks... only to give the big bankers more power, more money and to screw everyone else in the markets and any savers who want only a few percent on their savings?
Wall Street is dancing on its own grave here.
bkmk
I agree with the kids.