Gen Z users are leading net accumulation across direct equities, bStocks and traditional finance perpetuals, while trading less frequently than other working-age generations, according to new research from Binance Research.
The market research arm of cryptocurrency exchange Binance said 77% of Gen Z direct-equity accounts were net accumulators, compared with 74% for Gen X and 68% for Baby Boomers.
In bStocks, 76% of Gen Z accounts were net accumulators, the highest share of any generation and nine percentage points above Millennials at 67%. In TradFi-Perps, 60% accumulated, again the highest among all cohorts.
The direct-equity figures carried the most economic weight, with a Gen Z net flow ratio of 26.5% and average net inflow of $1,898 per account, Binance Research said in its weekly market commentary, “Gen Z Perspective Rewrite.”
The report also found that 22% of Gen Z direct-equity accounts have never placed a sell order, compared with 19% for Gen X and 9% for Baby Boomers.
These buy-only accounts averaged 1.63 trades a month in bStocks, against 3.45 for the typical user, while high-frequency behavior was effectively absent at 0.1%.
Gen Z was also the lowest-turnover working-age cohort across every product studied. The average Gen Z account traded 13 times a month in TradFi-Perps, compared with 17 for Millennials, 16.5 for Gen X and 19 for Baby Boomers.
Binance Research said Gen Z also avoided leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds more than any other working-age cohort on two of the three products.
Leveraged instruments represented 9.25% of Gen Z’s July turnover in direct equities but only 3.93% of net monthly inflow, indicating the instruments were being “round-tripped within the month rather than funded.”
Meanwhile, the ETF share of Gen Z equity volume increased from 14.6% in June to 25% in early August, compared with 9.5% for Millennials.
“Even so, the early pattern of more ETF and less single stock usage, runs counter to a pure speculation thesis,” Binance Research said.