--- title: First-Time Investors Flooded the Markets in 2020. What Are They Doing Now? description: Americans who were part of the 2020 investing wave are still maintaining brokerage accounts, and they're interested in assets like crypto. authors: - name: Pete Grieve role: Lead News Reporter url: https://money.com/author/pete-grieve/ bio: Pete Grieve is a personal finance reporter. In his time at Money, Pete has covered everything from car buying to credit cards to the housing market. education: University of Chicago, BA Political Science at_money_since: 2022 articles: 602 covers: - Investing - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://twitter.com/pete_grieve - https://linkedin.com/in/pete-grieve-b5aa02138 - https://www.facebook.com/petegrieve4 published: '2023-03-09T20:06:25.000Z' modified: '2024-01-10T13:54:54.000Z' section: Investing tags: - News word_count: 393 canonical: https://money.com/first-time-investors-2020-to-now/ type: NewsArticle source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Close-up Shot of a Persons Hands Holding a Smartphone with a Stock Market Graph on Screen](https://img.money.com/2023/03/News-Investors-Flooded-Market-2020.jpg) Millions of Americans became investors for the first time in 2020, a year when there was massive hype around trading, especially after the initial pandemic [market crash](https://money.com/bear-market-what-it-means/). Most people in this cohort are still investing today, according to a new study by [the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and other research partners](https://www.finrafoundation.org/sites/finrafoundation/files/Where-Are-They-Now-Following-Up-With-The-New-Investors-of-2020.pdf). Despite significant [market volatility](https://money.com/stock-market-volatility-impulse-trades-study/), the vast majority are still maintaining the accounts they opened in 2020. They have also developed some clear tendencies — like a greater affinity for riskier assets such as [cryptocurrency](https://money.com/what-is-cryptocurrency/). The study compared a group of Americans who opened their first [investment accounts](https://money.com/best-online-stock-trading/) in 2020 to a group of experienced investors who opened additional accounts the same year. The researchers studied both groups’ behavior in 2020 and 2022. ## What the research says The new investors don’t have as much of a long-term mindset as the experienced investors, and they’re more interested in assets that can produce high returns but come with a lot of risk. - Among new investors, about 28% reported holding [cryptocurrencies](https://money.com/crypto-prices-rally-whats-next/), which compares to 22% for the experienced group. - With time, new investors are increasingly turning to financial professionals for investing advice and relying less on personal research, a trend the study identified by comparing investors' influences in 2020 to their influences in 2022. - About 38% of the new investors said they opened accounts in 2020 to [gain investing knowledge](https://money.com/how-to-invest-beginners/), and the researchers found that these investors do appear to be "learning by doing." - That strategy seems to be working: From 2020 to 2022, new investors improved their scores by 9% on a quiz that tested their investing knowledge. ## Bottom line Experienced investors are more likely to still be maintaining the [investment accounts](https://money.com/new-to-investing-how-to-invest/) they opened in 2020 than new investors, with 88.6% reporting that they were still in the market compared to about 75% of those who opened their first account(s) in 2020. But investing was far from a passing fad just to get folks through lockdown. The surge of new investors in 2020 "was not merely a temporary uptick related to the pandemic or market conditions," according to the report — we now know it was a "a durable rise in the investing population." ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/first-time-investors-2020-to-now/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Investing", "item": "https://money.com/investing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Investors", "item": "https://money.com/investors/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "First-Time Investors Flooded the Markets in 2020. 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