Ally Invest Survey: Volatile Markets Attract Millennial ‘Buyers’

According to a new survey from Ally Invest, the majority of independent investors (54%) said they hold onto their investments when large market disruptions occur, while a still significant number (41%) said they take advantage of these market inflections to buy and add to their investment portfolio.

Only five percent of respondents said they would sell parts of their portfolio during times of disruption.

When broken down by age, those investors who said they would buy more stock during market swings were predominantly Millennials (55%), while older investors (64% Gen X and 77% Baby Boomers) said they were more likely to hold their course.

Ally Invest is the brokerage and wealth management arm of Ally Financial, and the survey, conducted June 19-20, 2019, polled more than 1,500 active individual investors who invest through the company.

"What's particularly noteworthy in these survey results is how comfortable investors have become with the notion of volatility," said Lule Demmissie, president of Ally Invest. "They are keenly aware of what drives market movement, but there isn't the same sense of panic we would often see just a few years ago when big market swings would occur."

As for the market outlook over the remainder of the summer, the majority of respondents (47%) believe stock market volatility will likely continue "as is." One in three investors (34%) believes market volatility would settle down, with a minority (12%) of respondents saying they expect market volatility to further increase. Seven percent said they were unsure.

In terms of the factors that hold the biggest potential to cause market disruptions during the rest of the year, the survey respondents cited tariffs (63%), trade agreements (57%), changing interest rates (52%), the regulation of big tech companies (39%), potential severe weather events (34%), jobs numbers (34%) and IPO activity (20%).

Results of the survey are for informational purposes only and not intended as investment advice. Investing involves risk. Thus, before investing you should consider what is suitable given your particular circumstances or seek professional advice.

Ally Invest is the brokerage and wealth management offering from Ally that exists alongside the firm's award-winning online banking products. Ally Invest offerings consist of a low-cost trading platform for self-directed investors, as well as a suite of affordable, automatically-managed investment portfolios, both delivered through a fully-transparent online process. The combination of low-cost investing with Ally's competitive deposit products gives customers a powerful value proposition for managing their financial well-being.

For more insight on this topic from Ally, visit https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/what-is-volatility-and-how-to-calculate-it/.

About Ally Financial Inc.

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a leading digital financial-services company with assets of $180.1 billion as of March 31, 2019. As a customer-centric company with passionate customer service and innovative financial solutions, we are relentlessly focused on "Doing it Right" and being a trusted financial-services provider to our consumer, commercial, and corporate customers. We are one of the largest full-service automotive-finance operations in the country and offer a wide range of financial services and insurance products to automotive dealerships and consumers. Our award-winning online bank (Ally Bank, Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender) offers mortgage-lending services and a variety of deposit and other banking products, including savings, money-market, and checking accounts, certificates of deposit (CDs), and individual retirement accounts (IRAs). We also support the Ally CashBack Credit Card. Additionally, we offer securities-brokerage and investment-advisory services through Ally Invest. Our robust corporate finance business offers capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies.