All news is rigorously fact-checked and reviewed by leading blockchain experts and seasoned industry insiders. - Gen Z was the most accumulation-oriented cohort across all three products studied by Binance Research.
- Twenty-two percent of Gen Z direct-equity accounts had never placed a sell order.
- ETF use is rising while leveraged products attract trading activity but little lasting capital.
- The findings challenge the assumption that younger digital investors primarily chase short-term speculation.
New platform data published by Binance Research on August 12 shows younger users trading less frequently than other working-age cohorts, accumulating across equities, bStocks and TradFi-Perps, and increasingly directing new money toward unleveraged ETFs. The most important finding is not simply that Gen Z buys more than it sells. It is that the distinction between what younger investors trade and where they actually leave capital points toward a more allocation-oriented strategy than headline trading activity suggests.
One in five Gen Z equity accounts has never sold
The clearest evidence comes from direct equities.
Some 22% of Gen Z direct-equity accounts had never submitted a sell order, compared with 19% for Gen X and 9% for Baby Boomers. Millennials were higher at 30%, so Gen Z does not lead every measure, but the result is still difficult to reconcile with a purely short-term trading thesis.
Buy-only behavior becomes even more revealing when trading frequency is considered. In bStocks, these accounts averaged 1.63 trades per month, versus 3.45 for the typical account, while only 0.1% qualified as high-frequency users.
Ticket sizes also complicate the stereotype. Among the assets highlighted by Binance Research, the largest average direct-equity purchases went to SCHD, a dividend ETF, at $16,567 per trade, followed by Broadcom at $12,370. By contrast, highly recognizable technology names attracted much smaller average tickets in the relevant product data, including $633 for Tesla and $514 for Nvidia in bStocks.
The implication is not that Gen Z has suddenly become conservative. It is that large allocations and frequent trades appear to serve different purposes.
Gen Z is accumulating across equities, bStocks and perps
The pattern broadens when the definition changes from “never sold” to simply buying more than selling.
| Product | Gen Z Net Acc. |
|---|---|
| Direct equities | 77% |
| Stocks | 76% |
| TradFi-Perps | 60% |
Key Takeaways:
- Net capital accumulation is economically meaningful.
- Stocks/direct equities hold the highest share among generations studied.
- TradFi-Perps net buying is small relative to gross turnover.
That final qualification is important. The net flow ratio in TradFi-Perps was below 1% of gross trading volume, meaning the product remained predominantly a round-trip trading venue despite the buy skew. Direct equities carried considerably more weight, with a 26.5% net flow ratio and average net inflow of $1,898 per Gen Z account.
The data therefore supports a narrower conclusion than “Gen Z always buys.” When younger investors commit capital for longer periods, they appear more consistently accumulation-oriented.
Younger users are trading less than Millennials and Gen X
Trading frequency produces another unexpected result.
Gen Z was the lowest-turnover working-age cohort across all three products in Binance Research’s sample. The average Gen Z TradFi-Perps account traded 13 times per month, compared with 17 for Millennials, 16.5 for Gen X and 19 for Baby Boomers. In direct equities, Gen Z averaged eight trades compared with 10 for Millennials.
The high-frequency tail was also smaller. Only 14% of Gen Z TradFi-Perps accounts fell into Binance’s high-frequency category, versus 18% for Millennials and Gen X. In bStocks, just 1% of Gen Z accounts were high frequency.
This matters because a relatively small group of highly active young traders can disproportionately shape perceptions of an entire generation, particularly on social media. Platform-level account behavior suggests that group is not representative of most Gen Z users in this dataset.
Leverage gets traded, but it is not where the money stays
Perhaps the strongest distinction in the report concerns leverage.
According to the information, in July, leveraged and inverse ETFs represented 9.25% of Gen Z direct-equity turnover but only 3.93% of net inflows. Their share of net inflow then fell to 2.65% in early August.
That gap indicates leveraged products are more often being opened and closed within the same period rather than functioning as long-term allocations.
Participation data points in the same direction. Some 88.2% of Gen Z TradFi-Perps accounts recorded no leveraged or inverse ETF activity, while the figure reached 98.9% in bStocks. Gen Z used these instruments less than Millennials across each of the products studied.
This provides a more useful way of thinking about risk appetite. A trader can use a leveraged ETF tactically without making leverage a large part of their portfolio. Turnover measures activity; net flow better captures where new money ultimately stays.
ETFs are gaining ground faster among Gen Z
The clearest destination for that capital increasingly appears to be unleveraged ETFs.
Their share of Gen Z direct-equity volume rose from 14.6% in June to 21.4% in July and 25.0% in early August.
Millennials allocated only 9.5% of early-August equity turnover to ETFs. Meanwhile, unleveraged ETFs increased from 18.5% to 21.9% of Gen Z net equity inflows between June and July.
The trend also proved more resilient when overall investment slowed. Gen Z’s total net equity deployment declined 17.4% in July, yet net flows into unleveraged ETFs slipped only 2%, compared with declines of 20.4% for single stocks and 28.5% for leveraged products. The number of Gen Z ETF holders actually increased 2.9%.
There is outside evidence that younger investors are increasingly comfortable with fund-based investing. The Investment Company Institute estimated that 19.8 million U.S. households held ETFs in 2025, while its research has repeatedly identified younger households as an important source of fund adoption.
The dataset challenges a stereotype, but it does not describe all Gen Z
There is an important limitation to the findings.
Binance Research is analyzing behavior within its own product ecosystem, not conducting a representative survey of the global Gen Z population. The direct-equity product also only reached meaningful scale in June, giving the report roughly two months of mature behavior to evaluate. Binance itself cautions that this is not enough to establish a durable trend.
That makes the findings more useful as behavioral evidence than as a generational verdict.
The more compelling question is whether the divergence between trading activity and capital allocation persists.
If ETF ownership continues rising while leveraged turnover remains largely round-trip, Gen Z’s investment behavior may increasingly resemble a core-and-tactical portfolio: diversified products for capital accumulation, with higher-risk instruments used at the margins rather than as the foundation.
The next few months will provide a better test. Retention rates in the June and July ETF cohorts, changes in net flows during a major equity drawdown, and whether the current low-turnover pattern survives heightened volatility would reveal far more about Gen Z’s investment discipline than another snapshot of which stocks are attracting the most trades.
