Risk-taking across generations
The typical millennial household takes substantial equity risk. However, one notable group, at least a quarter of millennial investors, may have been strongly influenced by bear-market experience and have adopted conservative portfolios.
Over the recent five-year period from 2012 through 2017, there has been a general shift toward more balanced strategies and away from all-equity allocations.
Millennials who started investing after the global financial crisis are more than twice as likely to hold zero-equity portfolios as those who started investing before.
Most households are willing to take equity market risk
Millennial investors may be more risk-averse as a generation, certain survey evidence suggests. Millennials, born after 1980, have experienced two severe bear markets—the collapse of the internet bubble in 2001–2002 and the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.