Young adults and investing for the future: Examining futuring practices and wellbeing through digital brokerage platforms

Abstract

Young adults’ lives are increasingly characterised by uncertainty, which has heightened since the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as an expectation that they transition into adulthood as entrepreneurial, responsible subjects. In this context, greater numbers of young people are participating as retail investors, motivated by the growing accessibility of financial technologies, including digital brokers. Yet this technological accessibility does not explain why or how they decide to invest. Drawing on focus group discussions with Australian young adults (19–30 years) who invest via digital brokers, this article explores their participation as retail investors. Focused on long-term financial ‘horizons’, participants explained how investing requires temporal work to mitigate existing uncertainty and enable their imagined future wellbeing. Drawing on theories of ‘futuring’, we surface their varied practices towards hedging against and with uncertain and risky futures. Such practices weigh up individuals’ circumstances, which are regulated through gender, class and contextual considerations, as well as housing or employment market imaginaries and key (imagined) milestones in one’s life. The article considers the implications of these futuring practices, where not investing becomes a risk for future wellbeing, and how these practices align with the entrepreneurial present that has become a critical aspect of young people’s transitions into adulthood.