MW More teens are investing in the stock market as the American dream falls out of reach

By Venessa Wong

As more kids invest, the new 'Trump accounts' are poised to make it even easier

Many old ways of achieving the American dream seem out of reach, "but if you still want to get there, maybe there are some new approaches," said Matt Carmichael, a senior vice president at Ipsos.

In middle school, Adam Erlichson asked his parents to help him invest $100 he was gifted during the holidays. His parents had instilled a habit of saving money, and a family friend who works in finance had begun teaching him about the benefits of investing early.

His parents obliged, opening a brokerage account for him. Then, at the age of 12, "I started playing around with it," Erlichson said.

The preteen initially bought shares of Starbucks $(SBUX)$ and Nike $(NKE)$, brands he recognized.

"Of course, as time grew, I would diversify," he told MarketWatch. Erlichson began following business news. When Americans started traveling again after the pandemic, he bought shares of United Airlines $(UAL)$.

Today, Erlichson is a 17-year-old high-school senior in New Jersey, and his portfolio has grown a total of 18% over the last three years. He is now looking into investing the income he earns from his car-detailing business as well as his job at a smoothie shop into index funds, such as the Fidelity 500 Index Fund FXAIX, after learning about them in a personal-finance class at school.

For "most people my age, the value of the college degree has lessened," Erlichson said. Many of his peers are exploring ways to earn money that don't require higher education, he noted. While Erlichson still sees college as necessary for securing work that lends itself to "a comfortable life," he believes investing is an equally important component. "If you can make your money work for itself, why wouldn't you?," he said.

As technology and new platforms have made the financial markets more accessible, and other assets people previously built their wealth on - most notably, their homes - have become less affordable, a growing share of young Americans and their parents have made investing a focus of their financial efforts, experts say.

The financial-services firms Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab all told MarketWatch there have been notable increases in the number of youth investment accounts opened in recent years. And as more young people question the value of a college degree in an evolving labor market, teens told MarketWatch it is particularly important to prioritize investments, and not just degrees, from an early age to secure their financial futures.

At Vanguard, the surge in interest in youth investing has translated to a 56% increase in the number of custodial brokerage accounts - which an adult manages for a minor - from 2020 to 2025, according to data shared with MarketWatch. Fidelity had 61% more custodial accounts in 2025 compared with 2022, and 214% more youth accounts for teens ages 13 to 17 to start investing on their own over the same period. Schwab told MarketWatch the number of custodial brokerage accounts increased by 9% in the past year alone.

More dramatic changes could be on the way. The launch this summer of a program that will provide government funding of "Trump accounts" for children born between 2025 and 2028 will potentially make investing more accessible to a cohort of kids who do not come from well-resourced families that are familiar with the financial markets.

"I believe the Trump accounts will be remembered as one of the most transformative policy innovations of all time," said President Donald Trump at a summit about the accounts on Wednesday.

"President Trump is minting future investors on every rung of the economic ladder," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the same event. "Through the power of compound growth, Trump accounts will turn simple investments into life-changing money that our children can use for college, their first home or their retirement - the basic building blocks of the American dream."

Bessent noted that about 10,000 American children would be born on Wednesday alone, and 3.6 million would be born this year - and all of them will be eligible for a Trump account.

Brad Gerstner, co-founder of Invest America, the group spearheading the Trump accounts initiative, said at the summit that many people who have been left behind financially have become disconnected from the American dream. Gerstner said so far, only kids "with money" have been taking advantage of capitalism and investing. "The problem is everybody else," he added.

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In a Gallup poll conducted in December, the only aspect of the future that a majority of people felt optimistic about in 2026 was the stock market. Americans said they were pessimistic about prices, taxes, employment and general economic prosperity in the coming year.

While teens and young adults still believe in the American dream, many say "it's harder to achieve than it used to be" and surveys show that "fewer think that if you work hard, you'll succeed," said Matt Carmichael, a senior vice president at the market-research firm Ipsos. While homeownership was a top component of achieving the American dream for older generations, in Ipsos surveys, young Americans say they prioritize "freedom" instead, he noted. For some, homeownership now represents financial strain more than financial stability.

"Younger folks, especially younger men, are looking to get rich quick and also to build 'passive wealth' - all of which I think goes back to the aspiration gap," Carmichael said. "Many [old] ways of achieving the dream seem out of reach, but if you still want to get there, maybe there are some new approaches."

For Adam Erlichson's parents, investing was an important skill to pass on to their children. "We just felt like you need to give yourself every opportunity for success," said his mother, Kim.

A Gen X-er, Kim said that while her father taught her budgeting and financial concepts when she was a child, she didn't actually start investing until she started working after college. "I started later, and I think that left a lasting impression. If I had even started earlier, those extra 10 years, what might my money look like? And so that's why we started even earlier with our kids," she told MarketWatch.

As an example, if a child invests $1,000 at birth in a fund that grows 10% on average, that investment could grow to about $490,000 by age 65. By comparison, if that person didn't invest until they were age 10, missing a decade of compounding, that $1,000 investment would only grow to about $189,000 by age 65. If they didn't start investing until age 20, that $1,000 investment would only grow to $72,000 by age 65.

Parents are catching on. According to data shared with MarketWatch from Greenlight, the banking and investing app for kids, users ages 0 to 4 who received money to invest got $219 on average last year; users that age who bought stocks purchased $125-worth on average, a small but incredibly early step on their investing journey. Their most popular picks included the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF CO:VOO, Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla $(TSLA)$, Apple $(AAPL)$, and Amazon (AMZN).

MarketWatch asked teens who invest about what role investing plays in their personal goals.

"It's so easy to invest now," said Alexandria Kehoe, a 17-year-old high school junior in Florida who has been managing her own brokerage account since the pandemic, a time when many individual investors jumped into the stock market with the help of platforms like Robinhood. Among her early picks was Scientific Games (formerly SGMS), a gaming, betting and lottery company. Her parents both worked in finance, and Kehoe plans to study accounting and tax law to build a career alongside her investments.

"I think it's a great thing, especially accounts like 529s, IRAs, UTMAs - long-term accounts," Kehoe said. Yet some of her peers have adopted a get-rich-quick view of investing. "They're just like, 'Oh yeah, I'll put a couple bucks in and I'll make a million.' I don't think that's how it works."

Arjun Ramakrishnan, a high school senior in Oregon who wants to work in equity research, told MarketWatch he dreams "one day owning a home, but I don't think it's as high of a priority for me as getting other things for myself in order." He added that he wouldn't "as if I didn't accomplish the American dream" if he rented later into his life.

Ramakrishnan started experimenting with stock market simulators in middle school, starting with buying shares of Apple (AAPL) because he knew a new iPhone would be launching soon. He opened a brokerage account in high school. He is now invested in Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF CO:VOO. "I wanted to improve my own skills the most before I started actively managing my own money," he said.

Ramakrishnan is now the West Coast student advisory board vice president of the Young Investor Society, a nonprofit funded by corporate sponsors including Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs $(GS)$, and JPMorgan $(JPM)$ that works with 3,370 schools, roughly 75% of which are U.S.-based high schools, plus a few middle schools.

Neil Goyal, the 17-year-old vice president of East Coast for the Young Investors Society student advisory board, said by the end of ninth grade, he had opened and was managing a small account of his own, seeded with a $182.50 prize he won from the YIS, which he mainly used to buy shares of Microsoft $(MSFT)$, Apple (AAPL) and an S&P 500 ETF.

Attaining a college degree and investing "are equally important to me," Goyal told MarketWatch. College "opens up so many doors." Investing at the same time can help a working person "pursue what you would like to pursue, while having a solid financial future," he said.

America's first large cohort of young investors

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January 28, 2026 13:00 ET (18:00 GMT)

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