An unforgettable childhood moment defined how John Kakuku thinks of investing his money when the time comes. During the 2008 financial crisis, his mother asked him if he was willing to donate his piggy bank savings to the family's grocery fund if his father, a lawyer, lost his job.
“She was very worried,” recalled Kakuku, 12.
His family avoided the disaster. “As far as I know, we never missed a mortgage payment. We didn't get back the car, there was nothing like that,” recalls Kakuk, who runs Bridger Digital, a marketing company. But the rattle experience has trained Montana's natives last week against the uproar caused by President Trump's sudden global tariff announcement.
The market fell sharply in response, but Kakuku, who described himself as “particularly invested” and felt little wary about his portfolio, even if it had been a short-term physical blow. On Wednesday, Trump announced he would suspend tariffs for most countries for 90 days, with the S&P 500 swinging in the opposite direction for its biggest daily profit since 2008.
“People of my age are in a very different position from their parents when they were at our age,” Kakuku said. “We don't really lose, we just get everything.”
Interviews with young investors, ranging from high school students in their late 20s to entrepreneurs, are in line with variations in the subject. According to a Modern Wealth Survey from Charles Schwab last year, Gen Z members began investing six years ago for the average millennial at 19 and 16 years ago for the typical baby boomer, with low entry bars and digital platforms with cryptocurrency promises.
These young investors said they were trying not only to make the risk look adorable, but they were able to maintain the investment philosophy that would keep the market shaking wildly. If anything, the plunging price led to a discount that was unavailable in the year when the stock market was on unforgiving climbs.
“We've become accustomed to precariousness like older generations aren't,” said Alex Tucker, a senior at a Washington, DC school that opened a Vanguard account a few years ago but began investing proactively late last year. He was just a toddler during the 2008 crisis, but Tucker believes that the lessons from the crash will fully enhance the financial outlook for his generation.
“I think the Great Recession showed that Greenspan could be wrong,” he said. “The market was wrong. The bank was wrong. The whole system could corrupt. And there's a way to keep going. Then there's a way to make money.”
Tucker turned 18 on April 2nd, and the White House had framed it as a “liberation day” from a global trade arrangement that was unfair to American workers and consumers. Since then, he has become a bit wealthy, buying put options for Tesla stocks, and correctly predicts that the association of the automaker's chief executive Elon Musk and the Trump administration will cause a sale.
For recent guidance, Tucker has made famous by Michael J. Burry, who became famous for Michael Lewis' book The Big Short, and Kyla Scanlon, who has nearly 15 million followers on Tiktok, by writing and creating a video about the investment.
Scanlon advises a careful approach known as “risk-off,” and much of the world is working on the implications of Trump's Tampas tariff plans. She pointed out money as a potential source of security.
“I think investors should make a little allocation to gold just to have that hedge,” she said.
Tiktok exists in a video about investing in gold amidst floods of advice on how to withstand chaos. Just as smartphone-based trading platforms like Robinhood were launched a decade ago, empowering casual investors, the rise of social media has created an ecosystem of influencers who speak fluently to younger audiences.
“It's really about following people, ideas, stories,” said Stephen Wang, who dropped out of Harvard to launch Dub, a platform where users can mimic the trade of influential investors. There is no longer a Bloomberg terminal. Once Wall Street was a must, and was an avatar for previous generation investors.
“The younger people are no longer sitting on screens, so they just look at the price return,” Wang said.
Some of the online expertise is questionable (and difficult to identify as such), but some advice is well-versed and skillfully tailored to modern sensibilities. On “Buying DIP” (investment in the market as prices drop), the two-minute Tiktok video by entrepreneur Derrick Fung has over 750,000 views. Accompanying comments include discussions on retaliatory tariffs, inelastic markets, and price return.
Young investors have the luxury of time, and the stock market tends to reward patience.
“Around 5-10% variation – in the long run, it's likely to be exposed to the weather,” says Isaac Chan, 16, a student at the Edison Academy Magnet School in Edison, New Jersey and a member of the Young Investors Association. He began investing while learning remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, leaving plenty of time for other pursuits.
To learn the basics, Mr. Chan said he read Investopedia and followed the advice of Warren E. Buffett and Charles T. Munger. Now, sailing his first serious storm, he can maintain the equality of the old hands.
“What I'm really worried about isn't necessarily my portfolio. That's my parents,” Chang said. “They don't have the luxury of waiting for a recession. For them, this is a real-time redrawing of their retirement security.”
“It's exciting to see this kind of market dip,” said Chris Josephs, 29, who co-founders a trading platform called Autopilot. He certainly didn't support the recession, but added that the recent market falls allowed discounts on blue chip stocks such as Apple and Nike.
“If these stocks drop 40%, that means I get a 40% better price,” he said.
Other young investors are moving to isolate themselves from future shocks.
Like Chang, a student at Mount Everest Academy in San Diego and a member of the Young Investors Association, Christchana Song, 17, said: (She learned to trade from that tutorial, she said.
And like Chang, she began trading in the summer of 2020 as the stock market recovered sharply from the shock of the pandemic lockdown.
“I certainly had to rethink how to achieve these goals,” Son said. “We previously supported international companies, but now we are more cautious about the tariff obstruction sector and are beginning to see more domestic opportunities.”
Scanlon believes that now may be a time for “some degree of international exposure” as the US economy is undergoing transformation under Trump's unpredictable direction.
“Uncertainty is expensive,” she said, pointing to the relative safety of the German industrial and defense sector. Overall, European stocks enjoy the recent surge in popularity thanks to Trump. Tariffs also raised the outlook for a decline in the US economy.
“We have stock, but nothing flashy,” says Abdullah Hassan, a White House spokesman under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is scheduled to graduate from Georgetown law school next year. Hassan said he and his peers are more concerned about “immediate recession” and finding work.
