Boomers are ruining the stock market for Millennials....Rage bait or truth?

[1srelluc]

The great boomer selloff may overwhelm US stocks​

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/great-boomer-selloff-may-overwhelm-us-stocks-2025-05-23/

There’s no shortage of theories around to explain the stalling of the U.S. stock market this year. Possible culprits include nosebleed valuation multiples, sky-high real interest rates, extreme policy uncertainty and the sustainability of the national debt.

Yet the biggest threat to the four-decade-long run in American equities lies in the United States’s superannuating population. Three decades ago, the infamous "market meltdown hypothesis" predicted disaster once the baby-boom generation hit retirement age. That fear didn’t play out straight away, but the idea may be about to have its day.

Meanwhile, the generation of U.S. savers available to absorb the boomers’ selling is as puny as predicted.

According to World Bank data, there were 5.5 working-age Americans for every over-65 in 1990. By 2023 that number had fallen below 4. It was based on just such a collapse in the ratio of demand and supply that the market meltdown hypothesis Cassandras warned that stocks could easily drop by a third when the boomers sold.

That might turn out to be an underestimate. Since the 1990s, two new demographic factors have emerged which threaten to make a U.S. market meltdown even more painful than its original prophets predicted.

Meh, older boomers have been out of equities for years.

Most "boomers" have liquidated assets and consolidated to cash, land, and other hard assets. We even put money into the economy to fix up the old homestead.

The market to them now is just a way to piddle around, make a quick buck (because they are liquid), then bail till the next fear stoked buying opportunity arrives.....It's just fun and games for me now.

Hopefully "Mills" are putting at least the company match into their 401k’s. If not then it sucks to be them.

Then there's the cash/property the kids of "boomers" will reinvest when we kick-off so I'm not seeing the "doom".

 

[Mac-7]

The great boomer selloff may overwhelm US stocks​

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/great-boomer-selloff-may-overwhelm-us-stocks-2025-05-23/

There’s no shortage of theories around to explain the stalling of the U.S. stock market this year. Possible culprits include nosebleed valuation multiples, sky-high real interest rates, extreme policy uncertainty and the sustainability of the national debt.

Yet the biggest threat to the four-decade-long run in American equities lies in the United States’s superannuating population. Three decades ago, the infamous "market meltdown hypothesis" predicted disaster once the baby-boom generation hit retirement age. That fear didn’t play out straight away, but the idea may be about to have its day.

Meanwhile, the generation of U.S. savers available to absorb the boomers’ selling is as puny as predicted.

According to World Bank data, there were 5.5 working-age Americans for every over-65 in 1990. By 2023 that number had fallen below 4. It was based on just such a collapse in the ratio of demand and supply that the market meltdown hypothesis Cassandras warned that stocks could easily drop by a third when the boomers sold.

That might turn out to be an underestimate. Since the 1990s, two new demographic factors have emerged which threaten to make a U.S. market meltdown even more painful than its original prophets predicted.

Meh, older boomers have been out of equities for years.

Most "boomers" have liquidated assets and consolidated to cash, land, and other hard assets. We even put money into the economy to fix up the old homestead.

The market to them now is just a way to piddle around, make a quick buck (because they are liquid), then bail till the next fear stoked buying opportunity arrives.....It's just fun and games for me now.

Hopefully "Mills" are putting at least the company match into their 401k’s. If not then it sucks to be them.

Then there's the cash/property the kids of "boomers" will reinvest when we kick-off so I'm not seeing the "doom".

The Mils should move out of the Boomers garage or basement and leave them all alone

That’ll teach them

 

[odanny]

If you started investing in the 90's you've made your money and now you are spending it, you started investing in the "glory days" of the market, (1995 to present) and even including the dot.com bust of the early 2000's, and the 2008 meltdown, it took no special skill to make a lot of money if you just set it and forget it for the next two decades.

Now we have our money and there is no reason to try and earn any more. If the market dips in the future and gains are rolled back, the millenials need to realize that is a better situation, long term, for their investment growth than getting into the market when share values are very high.

If they can think of the long run, they will have a nice portfolio when they are near retirement, because the market will rebound, as it always does.