Millennials' Aversion to Stocks Isn't Irrational

Rather than assuming Millennials are stupid for not throwing their cash at the stock market, take a moment to think through the financial events they’ve witnessed as young adults: a dot-com bubble that burst in 2000, a war-induced shock in 2001, a near market collapse that began in 2007 and lasted through 2009, and a decade over which bonds outperformed stocks. And when you do the math on stock market returns from the top in 2000 — when Millennials first started graduating from college — through last Friday, you find that the average annual return on the overall market since March of 2000 is a measly 1.5 percent.