As Bitcoin began to climb to $60000, within two fleeting minutes in February, Alan George, 21, and some of his friends who invested with him came up with the idea of buying some bitcoins.
But he and the rest of the Yale student investment group are easier said than done. The independent fund, which manages more than $500000 in assets, was founded in 1982 and George is the president.
George said we made a decision in an instant: "since we don't know where we are, we should stay away." Citadel is the official sponsor of the fund, whose members have since worked in a number of investment banks, hedge funds and private equity funds, the latest of which are AQR Capital Management and Susquehanna International Group.
For Wall Street veterans, it may be a relief that Gen Z students at Ivy League schools are as confused as they are about the financial markets of the past 18 months. From online celebrity stocks to heterogeneous tokens (NFT) to special purpose buyout companies (SPAC), investing is no longer just about stocks and bonds. The pressure is the same for both veterans and beginners: worry about missing out on the hottest new things, but don't want to catch fire and lose money.
However, while the rise of retail investors to launch a counterattack has become the focus of attention, the next generation of investors may not be an average of 31-year-old people with a Robinhood Markets Inc. Account. Instead, they are more likely to come from investment funds from hundreds of universities in the US, which give students the opportunity to manage huge amounts of money (sometimes tens of millions of dollars) and actually experience the risks associated with the "people only live once" mentality.