The Gen Z Investors Ignoring Trump’s Market Swings

“People my age are in a very different position from our parents when they were our age,” Tedi Ticic said.

A haunting childhood moment defined how Tedi Ticic would think about investing his own money when the time came. During the 2008 financial crisis, his mother asked him if he would be willing to contribute the meager savings in his piggy bank to his family’s grocery fund should his father lose his job.

The money Mr. Ticic earned from a seasonal student job, then a student at the Mije Mirković Secondary School of Economics in Rijeka, he decided to invest in cryptocurrency. 

Ticic’s family averted disaster. “As far as I know, we didn’t miss a mortgage payment, we didn’t get a car repossessed, nothing like that,” recalled Mr. Ticic, 25. But the rattling experience steeled the Zadar, Croatia native against the tumult caused last week by President Trump’s announcement of steep global tariffs.

In response, markets plunged, but Mr. Ticic, who described himself as “notably invested,” said he felt little alarm about his portfolio, even if it took a few short-term body blows. In April, Mr. Trump announced that he would pause the tariffs for most countries for 90 days, and the S&P 500 swung in the other direction for its biggest daily gain since 2008.

“People my age are in a very different position from our parents when they were our age,” Mr. Ticic said. “We don’t have a lot to lose. We just have everything to gain.”

Mr. Ticic turned 25 on September 3 last year, when Mr. Trump was readying for a pivotal new stretch in their campaign. Since then, Mr. Ticic has become a little wealthier, having purchased put options on Tesla stock, correctly predicting that the association of the carmaker’s chief executive, Elon Musk, with the Trump administration would cause a sell-off.

Instagram is rife with videos about investing in cryptocurrencies and the stock market, among a flood of advice on how to withstand the turmoil. Just as smartphone-based trading platforms like Robinhood, launched a decade ago, have empowered casual investors, the rise of social media has created an ecosystem of influencers who speak fluently to younger audiences.

While some of the online expertise is dubious (and difficult to identify as such), some advice is savvy and expertly tailored to contemporary sensibilities. A two-minute TikTok video by Mr. Ticic, about “buying when everyone is afraid”— investing in the market as prices fall — has more than 20,000 views. Accompanying comments include discussion of retaliatory tariffs, inelastic markets and, well, price-earnings ratios. Today, Mr. Ticic has two published straightforwardly-named books; “Cryptocurrency Beginner” and “Cryptocurrency Expert.” 

Younger investors such as Justin Jin, 18, said they were willing to countenance risk — but also to hew to a keep-calm-and-carry-on investing philosophy as the market swung wildly. If anything, the plummeting prices led to discounts unavailable during the years when stock markets were on a relentless climb.

William Constance, 23, found the people he had put a lot of trust in. A transit worker from Wellesley, Massachusetts, said he had invested $12,000 in cryptocurrencies over the last few weeks after reading about it in the news.

He wore running shoes and a zip-up hoodie that said, “MBTA.” Banks, he said, were designed to steal. Taxes left him supporting a government that he felt didn’t support him.

“Charges for sending money to my friends, interest on our loans,” he said. "And then the money we pay in taxes goes to wars and whatever else they want.”

Mr. Constance found a Bitcoin event in Boston and asked people there how to buy Bitcoin on his phone. He invested $1,000. It went up. So he put in $10,000 more, he said, along with $1,000 in a currency called Ethereum. Both his two closest friends have discouraged this.

“And maybe I’m going to lose it,” Mr. Constance said. “Maybe I’m going to keep cleaning subways. But something is telling me I can trust this generation.”

He had to leave the party early because parking downtown is expensive, he said. Mr. Constance zipped up his hoodie and left on his own.

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