By Andrew Welsch

Being a do-it-yourself investor and an advised client aren't mutually exclusive. Many investors want both advice and to be hands on with parts of their portfolio. That is one of the insights Robinhood's Stephanie Guild has picked up during her 20-plus year career in finance. A takeaway for advisors is to embrace a client's DIY side.

"I think the industry sometimes says, just let us manage the money....But I don't think that's the best way to win over a client," she says. "I think you should serve them the way they want."

Guild worked in JPMorgan Chase's private bank and asset management units before joining Robinhood, where she now serves as senior director of investment strategy and president of Robinhood Asset Management. She spoke with Barron's Advisor about young investors' money habits and what next-gen advisors need to know to better serve these millions of investors.

How are next-gen investors different from older investors? The ways in which they're different circle around their access to information and data. They want to be a participant in markets, investing, and making decisions for themselves.

Social media is a part of that because you have financial influencers who talk about single stocks and what's happening in the market at a macro level. You've also got tons of podcasts out there and platforms like ours which can tell you, using some third-party data, what hedge funds have been doing and what other investors own if they own a particular stock as well.

You have more access to what the investment community is doing than ever before. So I think that has liberated this generation in terms of financial independence -- but only if you are interested in investing, otherwise you'd spend your time doing something else.

In what ways are next-gen investors similar to other generations? In my previous role at JPMorgan, I had a wide variety of types of clients and they all tended to want to invest in what they understood. For example, if they were in real estate, they wanted to invest in real estate. That translates to this generation, which understands Bitcoin and technology probably better than any other generation. When you consider the Robinhood investor index (which looks at the performance of the top 100 most owned investments on Robinhood), the top holdings are always in the tech and consumer space -- the things that they know and use.

Famed investor Peter Lynch suggested that people should invest in what they know. Peter did, and he also suggested that as long as you passed fifth grade math, you can analyze a company.

How is younger investors' investing style different from that of older generations? From looking at the data, what I see is that they kind of put it into buckets, meaning they use mental compartmentalization. They have core positions they always hold, but how much may depend on the stock price. They may always have some Apple or Tesla, but if Tesla goes up a lot, they'll sell some of it. So they may trade around their core positions. When something is going up a lot, sell a little, but not the whole thing.

I would also say they're growth investors. They can be quite opportunistic but believe in investing for the long-term. I think they're pretty savvy.

What are some of their most pressing financial concerns? It really depends on where you are financially. I think we have a subset of users who don't earn enough income and just want to grow their wealth. And we have customers who have established a nice nest egg and they are thinking about how much do I need to save? And, can I at some point become financially independent and not maintain a full-time job?

Are next-gen investors more likely to be DIY and less likely to seek out advice? They like to do both. I would say that historically the customers we have attracted want to do it themselves because that's what we offered. That doesn't mean they didn't have assets away [or held elsewhere]. Now that we offer Robinhood Strategies [ the company's digital advice offering], we see a mix even with our most active traders where they give us a portion to manage.

Is there a lesson there for advisors? The industry sometimes says, just let us manage the money. I don't think advisors should do that. I don't think that's the best way to win over a client; you should serve them the way they want.

Customers like to do some things on their own and hand some things over to us. And customers like the complement of having both and seeing what we are doing. The early feedback we have gotten on Robinhood Strategies has been positive. Our portfolios are unique because they include exchange-traded funds and single stocks.

How do next-gen investors want to be served? Because they have access to so much information, they can theoretically learn about markets and investing on their own, via the internet, or YouTube videos. As a result, I think they want to be approached in a way that says, "We know you can do this on your own."

If you truly want to help someone you don't start off by saying, "You don't know what you are doing." You should say, "Hey, I am here if you want help." When someone else is managing your money, you have to have some trust. So I think you want more communication than you may have had in the past. This generation is used to short bursts of information.

For Robinhood Strategies, we created something called Insights so that when we make a major change to the portfolio, it gives you a short blurb about why. You want to treat this generation like they already know the headline, so what is the next level down? And you want to find ways to give them even more information. If you don't give them ways to go a layer deeper in an easy way, you're doing them a disservice as the person working with them.

How did your career get started? I majored in finance in college, after lots of hemming and hawing. Two things drove me to it. First, I don't come from money, and both sides of my family are immigrants; on my mom's side, I was the first born here. Second, at the time, everyone majoring in finance were men. So I felt I could empower myself and I just thought, why was it all men going into this?

When I graduated, it was the peak of the tech bubble, and I worked at a tech firm, and didn't love it, so I moved to Fleming Asset Management. Chase bought them, and then Chase and JPMorgan merged. That is how I came to work at JPMorgan Chase.

It was a small office and you learned a lot by being in proximity. When JPMorgan took over, I tried different roles and found I liked investing. I spent 10 years in the asset management business, always on an investment team, in New York and London. Then I joined the private bank and took on more direct client responsibility, but as an investment-oriented person.

What are some of the most important things you learned about working with clients? Whether you have a little money or a lot, the emotions are the same: fear of losing it, fear of not having enough. One of the first things I would ask people is to tell me about some bad money or investing experiences. Everyone always has some baggage.

Why ask that question? What did you learn? Because there is an emotional trigger. What I didn't want to do as I was building trust was go to them and say "I have this investment idea." If it was something they had invested in years before and lost money, they immediately would shut you down. As part of building trust, you need to show you are listening. Let's say you lost money in Pets.com years ago. The next time something is astronomically going up, then I can relate it to that experience and show you I have been listening.

Earlier, I said I hemmed and hawed about majoring in finance -- the other major I considered was psychology. It kind of found me anyway.

What advice would you offer to people interested in a career in wealth management? It can feel unrewarding at first because you have to learn a lot about investing. You want to have knowledge but be able to present it in a way that you can build credibility with the people on the other side of the table. So you need to spend a lot of time reading and learning, but also be prepared to be humbled by markets and other people. You may have a divorcee sitting across the table from you and they may not be coming to the table in a totally rational way.

I remember an experience where I spent so much time analyzing the oil market for a client and came up with an amazing trade that he requested and then he just told me it was off. I was disappointed, but it wasn't all for nothing because I learned a lot about markets.

It was also a lesson that maybe I should have known something more about the client before doing all that. It's a long journey. It takes a while to get established -- more time than you think it should -- especially if you want to be an advisor.

What books do you recommend new advisors read? Three books: The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel, because you need to understand that. The second one I bring up a lot, which helps me understand patterns, is Who Moved My Cheese? It's a fast read about mice looking for cheese. Some mice get happy because there's so much cheese. Other mice recognize that in a year or so there won't be enough cheese. So I think about that when I am looking at companies that maybe are getting complacent. It's a good lesson. Sometimes success creates complacency.

The third one has nothing to do with business. It's called, The Four Agreements. It's a practical guide to personal code of conduct. I think it helps within the workplace, when interacting with clients. Especially one concept: Don't make assumptions. That is so important. Half the time you're fixing something it's because an assumption misfired.

Thanks, Stephanie.

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May 29, 2025 08:15 ET (12:15 GMT)

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