The ZeroHedge Article On That BofA Study On The Zillennials Has Re-Surfaced -- November 21, 2020

Remember this post from a couple of days ago?

BofA banking on Zillenials:

• It appears that BofA told ZeroHedge to remove the story based on copyright issues. [Later: the story is now back online — November 21, 2020.]
  

The study is not so much about "generation" as about "age": 16-year-olds think differently  than 60-year-olds; when those same 16-year-olds turn 60, their answers to the same questions will change;

• I "worry" about a generation that doesn't enjoy automobiles. Seriously.  
• actually, the whole article is somewhat ridiculous; it's a snapshot in time; do the same survey twenty years from now and see how the Z generation will be much like the current boomer generation;

• I can't make this up. Story removed from source. This was the link; let's see if it shows up later.
• the story -- not as good -- but at least "a" story of the BofA study is available over at BusinessInsight;

Maybe it was simply a glitch. The story now seems to be re-posted at ZeroHedge (same link as above):

It seems like only yesterday that Wall Street was writing massive research reports how the Millennials were going to "make a difference" in the world as a result of their "pent up" purchasing power which was just waiting to be unleashed.

Unfortunately, in retrospect the Millennials were a huge disappointment, having made absolutely no "difference" in the world (the Fed decided to make it for them) despite having created millions of ingeniously airbrushed Instragram posts.

And so, with Wall Street desperate to pin its hopes on someone who will prove to be the spending dynamo that pushes the US economy out of the doldrums - which is Millennials were supposed to be - the street has shifted it attention to those next in line, namely...

Gen Z (i.e., 20-year-olds).

In one of its massive "thematic investing" primers which doubles as a paperweight thanks to its hundred + pages of recycled content (copy a chart, replace Millennials with Gen Z, paste) Bank of America writes that "Here come the Zillennials! Gen Y is out, Gen Z is in" (which is oddly reminiscent of a similar primer the bank wrote a few years back when it said virtually the same things about Millennials).

But we digress: in an intro that will hardly endear Bank of America to the millions of 20-year-olds who are supposed to change the world, now that Gen Y has been cast into the trash bucket of demographics, the bank writes that "despite having an attention span shorter than a goldfish’s (8 seconds) Gen Z is the most disruptive generation ever and sees themselves as ‘citizens of the world.’

LOL.

The only "good" thing about the article, the breakdown of the different generations by age as generally accepted.

As stated earlier, I can't accept that our Sophia, age six years old, is in the same generation as her older sisters, age 14 and 17, and certainly not in the same generation as those now 24 years of age. Demographers are working too hard to try to shoe-horn generations into 20-year periods. 

Generation Y, 25 - 39, seems to make more sense, but when the current four-year-olds are 25, their oldest Z-Generation comrades will be 45 years old. Twenty-five-year-olds will still be living at home; forty-five-year olds will be looking at buying their first home, and, maybe their first car. Big difference.

There are at least four "areas" that seem to separate the youngest Zillennials from the oldest Zillennials:

• politics: the "coming of age" for the older ones will be the Obama-Trump-Biden era;
• economy: the older ones have been reading about a surging market, home-buying surge, but cannot participate
• technology/education: the older ones had no experience with remote learning
• sports: the older ones did not have their athletic experience interrupted by any pandemic

Most of this will be behind us when the younger ones are in middle school.