Mimicking President-elect Donald Trump — who has called himself “the king of debt” — risk-loving millennials used exchange-traded funds that employed leverage to juice their returns in the wake of the real-estate mogul’s election victory.
That didn’t work out so well for them.
With preferences for gold and volatility, however, they were largely in line with what the consensus called for in the event of a Trump victory — in other words, far off the mark.
“From triple X leveraged products to Vanguard, Millennials have shown they favor the extremes in terms of their growing ETF usage,” said Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas. “However, when it comes to calling the Trump rally, they weren’t alone in getting it wrong — every generation thought gold would rally.