How Millennials Are Changing
The Investment Game
By Gui Costin
Millennials are on the verge of becoming big players in the investment field.
Baby boomers, according to Forbes, are about to pass an estimated $30 trillion in assets down to millennials within the next few years. This generational transfer of wealth gives millennials many options on investing — starting with the investment firms they choose.
Understanding millennials’ mindset on investing and, just as importantly, learning their personality traits, preferences and dislikes, are crucial to any investment firm seeking to help them allocate their assets. For starters, millennials’ approach to investing is distinct to previous generations, and they handle money and choose the people who they entrust with that money very differently, too.
Those factors will have several ramifications for how assets are allocated in the next three, five, 10, 20, and 30 years. That’s why discovering how to connect with millennials so that they feel confident enough to trust you with their funds is critical.
How do millennials differ from previous generations, including their investment approach? Here are some revealing distinctions:
They’re more entrepreneurial. Whereas their parents, baby boomers, valued job stability and scaling the corporate ladder, millennials are more inclined to build their own businesses and take greater financial risks. They’re confident that even if they lose some money, they can earn it back — facts firms should consider as they approach this generation and brainstorm investment solutions.
They’re wary of Wall Street. After the Great Recession, many millennials were forced to take on student loans because their parents couldn’t afford college tuitions. So if they’re not entirely warm to the idea of Wall Street, what do millennials trust? Where do they see themselves putting the $30 trillion they’ll one day inherit? This group of investors favors commodities and options and they’re also more likely to put money in exchange-traded funds than their baby boomer parents.
They’re impassioned about helping the world. Millennials want to serve a greater purpose to humanity. This common trait has given rise to the concept of “impact investing” — intentionally putting money in companies or organizations that offer a financial return but also contribute funds toward creating a positive social or environmental impact.
They often don’t trust advisors. According to a study, 57 percent of millennials don’t trust advisors, believing they’re in it more for self-serving purposes than for their clients’ best interests. What they want is someone who wants to build a relationship with them and works toward gaining their trust.
So knowing how millennials and their investment thoughts are unique, how should investment firms navigate this young crowd of investors and best position themselves to reap the business of this generation, both today and in the coming years?
Create trust and be transparent. Investment firms can build a foundation to better serve the millennial generation by fostering relationships, customizing your advice, and being clear about fees. For example, millennials, unlike baby boomers, prefer flat fees over commission-based pay models; that’s what they’re most familiar with through the advents of Uber and Netflix.
Explore technology. Millennials like technology but they also like simplicity and convenience. Look for ways to leverage technology to make experiences simpler, more self-serving, and more convenient for millennial users. Robo-advisors and digital investment content platforms and tools are just the start of the options available to explore. If they find it inconvenient or complicated to do business with you, they’ll do it with someone else.
Be a great communicator. While technology and self-service drive them, millennials also appreciate a human touch in the investment space, meaning a hybrid of tech and human would be the ideal mix for them. Find out how your millennial client likes to communicate — by text, email, messaging via a digital investment content platform, or on the phone. And when you are communicating, remember to be an advisor, not a dictator. Millennials appreciate insight, but they still like to be the one controlling decisions that impact them.
Use data to customize recommendations. Track clients’ online activity to gather data about them and use this in conjunction with their personal preferences to send them customized investment ideas, alerts, and recommended products.
It comes down to this: Millennials and baby boomers are as different as rotary phones and text messages, and newspapers and podcasts. And they’re just as varied in their viewpoints of success and allocation of material wealth.
Therefore, if advisors truly want to stay relevant in the investment game, they’ll have to work hard to build rapport with this generation and show good will to retain them as clients both currently and into the future.
Gui Costin (www.guicostin.com), author of the No. 1 Bestseller Millennials Are Not Aliens, is an entrepreneur, and founder of Dakota, a company that sells and markets institutional investment strategies. Dakota is also the creator of two software products: Draft, a database that contains a highly curated group of qualified institutional investors; and Stage, a content platform built for institutional due diligence analysts where they can learn an in-depth amount about a variety of investment strategies without having to initially talk to someone. Dakota’s mission is to level the playing field for boutique investment managers so they can compete with bigger, more well-resourced investment firms.
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SELFISH THINGS
ANNOUNCE DEBUT
FULL-LENGTH RECORD LOGOS
DUE OUT SEPTEMBER 20TH
VIA PURE NOISE RECORDS
STREAM NEW SINGLE "HOLE"
Toronto, ON - Selfish Things have announced their highly-anticipated debut album will be released September 20th via Pure Noise Records. Logos is a collection of 11 tracks that dive right into the psyche of frontman Alex Biro. "I want people to know that there is strength in your faults. It's just as important to suffer as it is to find moments of joy and happiness. Darkness and light need one another" shares Biro on the upcoming album.
In addition to today's album announcement, Selfish Things have dropped a brand new single. "Hole" showcases the band's unique musical style. A propulsive rock melody is further enhanced by heavy hitting percussion, gentle piano melodies and Biro's one-of-a kind vocal quality. Fans can stream "Hole" today at https://smarturl.it/sflogos.
"Hole came to life as a result of familial turmoil and the impact lifelong choices can make on the people who surround you. Certain people are willing to turn a blind eye to the wrongdoing and malicious intent of others for the sake of stability." shares Biro on the track. "Mother's shouldn't blame themselves for the decisions their adult children make. It's imperative as well that those adult children realize that grace is a two way street in the face of conflict, and that those who brought you into the world should be put before egotism and anger."
"Hole" joins previously released singles "Pride", "Flood" and "Drained (ft. William Ryan Key)" from the forthcoming album, which was produced entirely by WZRD BLD. Fans can pre-order Logos at https://smarturl.it/sflogos.
Logos Track Listing
1. Flood
2. Blood (ft. Andy Leo of Crown The Empire)
3. Rowen
4. Pride
5. Synaptic
6. Torn (ft. Spencer Chamberlain)
7. Hole
8. Crutch
9. Drained (ft. William Ryan Key)
10. Mind
11. Youth
Selfish Things will be supporting Don Broco on their upcoming North American tour. Alongside Trash Boat and Sleep On It, the Canadian four-piece will be delivering their impassioned live performance to fans for a month long run kicking off September 12th in Boston, MA. Tickets are on-sale now with select dates already sold out. Biro will also join Cavetown for 3 special solo sets during sold-out dates on their US Tour. For tickets and updates on all upcoming tour dates, please visit: http://www.selfishthingsband.com/
Upcoming Selfish Things Tour Dates:
September 12 - Brighton Music Hall - Boston, MA
September 13 - Gramercy Theatre - New York, NY
September 14 - The Foundry @ The Fillmore - Philadelphia, PA
September 15 - Milkboy Arthouse - College Park, MD
September 17 - Amos' Southend - Charlotte, NC
September 18 - Soundbar - Orlando, FL
September 20 - The Masquerade - Atlanta, GA
September 21 - The Basement East - Nashville, TN
September 23 - Barracuda - Austin, TX
September 24 - Club Dada - Dallas, TX
September 26 - The Nile Theater - Mesa, AZ
September 27 - The Irenic - San Diego, CA
September 28 - The Troubador - Los Angeles, CA - SOLD OUT
September 29 - Slim's - San Francisco, CA
October 1 - The Crocodile - Seattle, WA
October 2 - Biltmore Cabaret - Vancouver, BC
October 3 - The Paris Theatre - Portland, OR
October 5 - The Loading Dock - Salt Lake City, UT
October 6 - Marquis Theater - Denver, CO
October 8 - Bottom Lounge - Chicago, IL
October 9 - Mahall's - Cleveland, OH
October 11 - The Shelter - Detroit, MI - SOLD OUT
October 12 - Hard Luck - Toronto, ON - SOLD OUT
October 13 - Le Ministere - Montreal, QC
October 14 - Wonder Ballroom - Portland, OR* - SOLD OUT
October 15 - Venue Nightclub - Vancouver, B.C.* - SOLD OUT
October 16 - The Showbox - Seattle, WA* - SOLD OUT
* - Alex Biro Solo in support of Cavetown
While taking their name from Jimmy Eat World's "23", with unmatched determination Selfish Things prove they are neither selfish nor self-serving. Having spent years cultivating and nurturing his raw, natural talent, dedication to musicianship and songwriting, Biro founded Selfish Things. All of this, in the hope of shedding light on one simple, yet oftentimes overlooked, concept - honesty.
Selfish Things is Alex Biro (Vocals/Guitar/Piano), Mike Ticar (Lead Guitar/Vocals), Cam Snooks (Rhythm Guitar) and Jordan Trask (drums).
Follow Selfish Things:
Website: http://www.selfishthingsband.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/selfishthingsband/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selfishthings
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selfishthings/
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Dear Editor:
Please consider this powerful exploration of nonviolence by veteran journalist Robert Koehler, a look at the humanity of the resistance and the inhumanity of those who violate basic human social contracts. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
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Participatory evolution
by Robert C. Koehler
1018 words
The big black pickup truck plunged into the protesters blocking the parking lot and I cringed, viscerally, as though I could feel it myself — this merciless crush of steel against flesh.
I was recovering from a bicycle injury when I watched the event on the news last week, as members of the Never Again movement stood their ground to shut down the Wyatt Detention Facility, in Central Falls, R.I. I had fallen a few days earlier; my face hit the sidewalk. I was far too close to my own trauma not to feel a horrified empathy as I watched the video.
And ever since then I’ve been thinking about the paradoxical courage of nonviolent resistance, nonviolent demand for change and the cessation of “legal” wrongs — from Jim Crow to colonial exploitation to the maintenance of concentration camps (in Germany, in the United States). The core paradox of nonviolent protest against such legally sanctioned immoralities is that, if you block a driveway with your body or simply cross a bridge, you’re depending on the humanity of those you confront, who are armed with the weapons they hold or the vehicles they are driving, to keep them from acting on their anger and harming or killing you.
Is this not the essence of courage? You are bringing nothing but yourself, empowered solely by the force of moral compassion — the way the world should be — to a confrontational demand for change. This doesn’t even compute as rational in a win-lose world. You are not setting your cause for justice and fairness aside as you engage the enemy in an armed shootout, with the plan to implement new social rules after you win. You are creating a new reality as you fight for it. Nonviolent protest is a confrontation between parallel universes: love vs. hate. This is, perhaps, the definition of evolution.
And it doesn’t come without pain.
Thus, on the evening of Aug. 14, some 500 Never Again protesters stood outside the Wyatt Detention Facility, a privately owned prison under contract with ICE, which was holding over 100 immigrant detainees, who were being denied needed medical care and enduring other inhumane conditions. Around 9 p.m., there was a shift change at the facility and some of the protesters placed themselves at the entrance to the main parking lot. This was indeed directly confrontational; they wanted to temporarily disrupt prison operations.
A short while later, the employee in the black pickup truck turned into the lot, blaring his horn at the protesters. As they pounded on the hood of his truck he gunned forward into the protesters, two of whom wound up being hospitalized (one man suffering a broken leg and internal bleeding). A short while later, half a dozen officers marched resolutely out of the facility and blasted the crowd with pepper spray, causing three more protesters, including a woman in her 70s, to be hospitalized.
That was it, except for the viral video and the news coverage. Even though the officers and the facility “won,” dispersing the crowd and clearing the parking lot, the driver who impulsively rammed the protesters was placed on administrative leave and shortly thereafter “resigned.”
The Rhode Island ACLU later declared, in a statement, that the facility’s response to the protest was “an attempt to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights by hundreds of peaceful protestors.” It was also “completely unacceptable uses of force.”
Maybe so, but I would add that it is also much, much more than that. The protesters were not standing outside the Wyatt Detention Facility out of some random desire to exercise a First Amendment right, but because of outrage at the facility’s relationship with ICE and the American government’s detention of immigrants. Whether they were acting within a constitutional right or utterly outside of their legal rights was irrelevant. They were claiming, in the moment, the right to interrupt the nation’s establishment of concentration camps and its indefinite detention of primarily Latin American asylum seekers — people fleeing, often with their children, desperate conditions in their native countries, partially caused by U.S. actions over the last six or seven decades.
They were, once again, crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge, walking unarmed into a confrontation with a domestic army of club-wielding police. They were walking with Martin Luther King, with Mahatma Gandhi, with Nelson Mandela.
“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind,” Gandhi said. “It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”
With these words in mind, I revisit my painful viewing of the pickup truck confrontation at the private prison. For a moment, as I watched the video and felt the pain being inflicted, I imagined Tiananmen Square — government forces breaking up a nonviolent protest with rifles and tanks, killing hundreds or maybe thousands in their determination to maintain dominance.
How is nonviolence more powerful than the weapons of war? It may not appear to be the case in the moment, but in the long run, the weapon-wielders lose. The opposite of nonviolence isn’t violence. The opposite is ignorance.
“As Jews, we’ve been taught to never let anything like the Holocaust happen again. This crisis isn’t happening just at the border. It’s happening in our communities all around the country.” Thus reads a Never Again Is Now recruitment declaration.
“. . . At our protest in August, a guard at the Wyatt drove his truck through a line of peaceful protesters blocking a parking lot. Shortly after, more guards came out and pepper-sprayed the crowd. These tactics were used to scare us away and make us give up, but instead we’re more determined than ever to shut down these systems of state-sanctioned violence. We need anyone and everyone to throw themselves into the gears of the system. We need our politicians to take drastic action to shut down ICE immediately and ensure safety for people fleeing to the United States. Until they do, we’re going to make it impossible for ICE to do business as usual. We refuse to wait and see what happens next.”
I would add: This is participatory evolution.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end~~~~~~~~~~
Robert Koehler(koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.
