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More younger Americans give up investing - survey
Wednesday June 11, 11:37 am ET

NEW YORK, June 11 (Reuters) - More younger Americans have stopped investing because of losses they've suffered in the stock market, a new survey has found.

The survey, sponsored by the Mainstay Funds unit of New York Life Investment Management, found that only 59 percent of investors ages 22 to 36 owned investments outside of their retirement plans in 2003, down from 70 percent in 2002.

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The percentage of these people who stopped investing because of market losses rose to 11 percent in 2003, up from 4 percent a year earlier, the survey found. The majority of these investors -- 58 percent -- cited a "lack of funds" as the reason for falling ownership of non-retirement assets.

"Those who perceive themselves as conservative have increased steadily over the past three years," Beverly Moore, managing director of retail markets at New York Life Investment Management in Parsippany, New Jersey, told Reuters on Wednesday. "They are concerned about the prolonged recession and negative environment."

The survey, released this week, polled 515 people and was completed in March, before this spring's stock market rally took off. The broad Standard & Poor's 500 index (CBOE:^SPX - News) has jumped more than 16 percent since the end of March.

Moore said that many investors appear more optimistic than they were a few months ago, when the survey was completed.

Although younger investors have grown more sober during the bear market, they are still less conservative in their investments than older people, the survey found.

According to the latest survey and MainStay's similar polls of other age groups, 31 percent of investors who belong to the so-called "Generation X" -- a term from an early 1990s novel by Douglas Coupland used to describe the post-Baby Boomer generation -- described themselves as "conservative," compared with 45 percent of Baby Boomers aged 37 to 54 and 53 percent of those ages 55 to 70.

The survey also found that 61 percent of Generation X investors expect a higher standard of living in retirement than their parents.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/030611/financial_fund_investors_1.html