New generation of gold bugs: Why millennials are holding more gold than older generations

Our Pippa Stevens has more on younger investors getting bit by the gold bug. Pippa, good morning. Good morning, Frank. Well, this is far from a boomers only trade. Millennials actually have the largest allocation to gold at 17% relative to baby Boomers 10% according to State Street. Now part of this is interest in a physical asset that retains value, like the gold bars Costco’s been selling out of 27 year old Adiba Ahmed, who lives outside Toronto, bought her first gold bar two years ago at TD Bank and she’s been buying ever since. As part of a balanced portfolio, there needs to be a way to secure the value of funds. And that’s why I was like, let me go buy gold because I know for sure it’s not a short term game. It is a long term way of storing value. I don’t increase and get emotional about my purchases. Again, as long as it’s 10% of My Portfolio, I’m OK with it. If it does, what amazing. If it goes down, I’m not affected because I’ve already hedged against other things 37 year olds. Mark Meyer is a precious metals reseller and dealer in Pennsylvania who said younger buyers are driven by distrust in the dollar. What I am fascinated with is the interest in the really young buyers, so those under 35 years old and generally when I talk to him and we sell, you know, small bars or or silver coins, the the general concern is that there’s, I want to say a distrust with the dollar and that’s what I guess pulls them into having interest in the gold and silver into physical products. Meyer owns gold bars and coins as well as gold mining stocks and silver. All told, it makes up about 1/4 of his investment portfolio, which also includes Crypto, the IAU, GLD and GDX. All up double digits this year with 69% of millennials saying, Frank, that the best way to invest in gold is through ETF’s. No. So First off, pip, when we talk about millennials, people are like 40-5 years old now. It’s like it’s not young people anymore. Millennials are like pretty adult right now. But I do want to ask you, when it comes to these gold bars, you mentioned that they they’re sold at Costco. So I was looking here, I remember I’m in the UK, they’re selling for like 31,000 lbs here. I think that’s like $34,000 something like that. Either way, talk about $34,000. How many people are actually buying those and then taking them home and put them in the safe or whatever you would do with it? Well, clearly there’s more interest. After Costco started selling them and kind of grabbed all the headlines and we saw a lot of people talking about them on social media, including TikTok. And you know, this is definitely not the most popular trade, but it is certainly one that’s growing in popularity. When gold is at a record high, that does increase interest and there’s a younger generation. I think millennials are still young by the way, Frank, but they’re they’re coming up and saying, you know, how can I diversify My Portfolio with stocks have do doing so well? Where else can I look for yields? But interestingly so, Adiba Ahmed up in Toronto said that when she first went to TD Bank to buy her very first gold bar two years ago, it took them more than an hour simply because no one ever came to buy gold. But now when she goes, the bank is actually running ads for gold. So it really does speak to kind of heightened interest, heightened awareness and the fact that you can actually buy physical gold. Frank.