The young generation of investors were kids during the 2008 financial crisis. And that’s shaping their risk appetite, says BNY

The global financial crisis saw U.S. GDP drop 4.3% and marked the country’s longest and deepest recession since the Second World War. Also dubbed “the panic of 2008,” the crisis led to the collapse of Wall Street giants Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

While many people can clearly remember the shock and turmoil of that time, there are a growing number of younger investors who did not directly experience the crisis, says Alicia Levine, Head of Investment Strategy and Equities at BNY Wealth. This means they have a greater appetite for risk.

“Over time, people get more risk averse, but, you know, it's very possible that this generation keeps the risk-loving gene because they started early,” she told InvestmentNews. “It may be because we are now almost 20 years, it's kind of shocking, we're 18 years from the global financial crisis.”

“The 30-year-old of today did not experience that, the 35-year-old of today did not experience that, and the 40-year-old of today was 22, so they probably didn’t have a lot to lose at the time,” she said.

“What do these investors know? These investors know buy the dip,” she added.

In particular, Levine pointed to the corrections of the last few years, such as the 2020 Covid crash, which saw the S&P 500 fall 34%, as well as the index’s fall in 2022 amid 9% inflation and the Fed hiking rates. “Guess what, there was no recession,” she said.

Levine also highlighted the market selloff and the record rapid recovery that followed President Donald Trump’s announcement of “Liberation Day” tariffs in April last year.

“If I had to project, I suspect that the 30-year-old of today or the 35-year-old today may be more risk accepting as they move forward in their lives.”

There have been plenty of signs of this behavior. Betterment’s 2025 Retail Investor Survey, for example, found that younger investors were displaying resilience even in a period of intense market volatility, and leaning into financial planning.

The young generation of investors also has other traits that are not necessarily seen in its predecessors, according to Levine. “We see retail investors becoming much more active in their teens and twenties in ways that previous generations did not,” she said, noting that this gives them a longer runway to build wealth.

This, Levine explains, might also be fueled by a softer job market for graduates in their twenties and the unaffordability of first homes.

Set against this backdrop, BNY Wealth, which oversees around $300 billion in assets, is rounding out its “core value proposition” of fully diversified portfolios by adding new asset classes and solutions. “We've rounded out our offerings in a way that we can appeal to the client who's interested in aggressive growth in a way that speaks to them, while also preserving the fully diversified portfolios,” said Levine.

Levine said that BNY Wealth is starting to offer a wider range of alternatives, and is looking more deeply at infrastructure, hard assets, secondaries, distressed assets, and credit.  “We’re having conversations about digital as well,” she added. “That’s not fully done yet, because it has to go through certain hoops.”