Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes Outpace Older Investors

Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes are already under way, well before voters reach the November midterm elections. According to a survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute, 72% of Gen Z investors said they had changed their retirement savings or portfolio in anticipation of the election outcome, compared with 17% of Baby Boomer investors. The gap, reported by Bloomberg, points to a generation that treats an election as a market event to act on, rather than background noise to ignore.

Brandon Gaw, a 22-year-old engineering student in Oregon, fits that pattern in a small, concrete way. Reuters reported that he watches news about possible restrictions on Chinese-made memory chips and competition in the chip market, then adjusts holdings he thinks could be hurt by pre-election swings. He has moved toward cash and sold shares in smaller, newer companies tied closely to excitement about artificial intelligence, while adding to positions in established companies including Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and Apple.

His portfolio, as Reuters described it, is spread across different kinds of holdings. Crypto, gold and silver together make up about five to ten percent, exchange-traded funds account for around 30%, and individual stocks account for 60%. He has left his retirement investments unchanged, a detail that matters because it separates a tactical shift in a trading account from a rewrite of a long-term plan.

The survey behind the shift

Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes drive much of that overall figure, since younger investors changed course at a far higher rate than older ones. The wider survey, conducted by Harris Poll for Nationwide in late summer, covered more than two thousand investors and more than five hundred financial professionals. Across all ages, 40% of investors said they had changed their retirement savings or portfolio ahead of the midterms. Of that broader group, 15% moved money into more conservative or lower-risk investments and 13% diversified into different asset classes or sectors, according to the survey release.

Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes also show a split in how people moved. About 24% of Gen Z respondents said they moved money into more conservative or lower-risk investments ahead of the election, according to Bloomberg. More than a quarter of Gen Z investors, 27%, said they had consulted a financial adviser specifically about election-related risks, compared with 4% of Boomers.

Anxiety runs through the numbers as well, and Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes sit inside that wider unease. More than half of investors, 56%, said the midterms were making them feel more anxious, and 75% said the outcome could have a meaningful impact on their long-term financial plan, according to Nationwide. Three in four investors also said they wanted guidance from an adviser about the financial impact of the midterms on their plan.

Why advisers are urging a slower hand

Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes are the backdrop advisers are responding to, even as most counsel patience. More than six in ten advisers, 63%, said that not changing investment strategies is the best course of action in an election year, up from 52% who said the same in 2024, according to Nationwide. Three quarters of advisers also described the current election environment as more disruptive to client planning than prior cycles, a sign that the pressure on clients is real even when advisers counsel patience.

History gives that advice some support. Bloomberg data cited in the coverage show the S&P 500 index delivering positive returns in the 12 months following every midterm election going back to 1950, regardless of which party won. The average return in those periods was fifteen percent, compared with a long-run yearly average of just over ten percent, a record that weakens the case for treating one election as a reason to rebuild a portfolio.

Tyler McConville, a Wisconsin-based certified financial planner, put the risk plainly in the Reuters account: the challenge is telling which information actually matters to a long-term plan. Markets, he said, have historically been moved more by economic fundamentals and specific policy outcomes than by election headlines, and the biggest risk comes when long-term portfolio decisions are made on short-term political worries. That framing fits Gaw's own approach in a market where Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes are already common: a willingness to trade around volatility, a core of established holdings, and untouched retirement savings.

For younger investors, the survey suggests a useful distinction. Changing a trading account around an election is different from abandoning a retirement plan because of one, and asking an adviser about election risk is different from letting election anxiety set the asset mix. The Gen Z Midterm Portfolio Changes in the survey show a generation willing to act, and the adviser response shows why acting with a plan, rather than on a headline, is the part that tends to hold up after the votes are counted.

Sources: Bloomberg coverage of the Nationwide survey, and Reuters reporting on Gen Z investors ahead of the midterms.