Stocks only go up, right?* Retail investing is hitting its zeitgeist moment, now what

It’s interesting to think about how new generational consumer behaviors translate into new businesses. We’re seeing a slew of startups building better solutions to the housing crisis, the climate crisis, the education crisis. But there are also less obvious impacts from consumer behavior:

Like angel investments in the Bay Area, when you add social and experiential value to other asset classes like stocks, sneakers, and cryptocurrencies, price is divorced from hard math and becomes more emotional.

This may sound dystopian to some, the plotline of a Black Mirror episode. But social tokens are part of a broader and fundamentally positive phenomenon: everyone is becoming an investor. Over time, wealth has accumulated with a select few—the investing class—while the rest of America rents time as salaried and hourly workers. Only one in two Americ... See more