CommSec Pulse: Millennials

How Millennials are managing their finances

Many Millennials prioritise financial stability, but they’ve had a harder path getting there. Compared to Gen X or Baby Boomers at the same age, they often carry:

• Higher student debt
• Slower wage growth early in their careers
• Higher cost of living (especially housing in cities)

Because of this, financial wellbeing for millennials appears to have shifted from traditional milestones, such as owning a home early, to flexibility and security, with emergency savings, manageable debt, income stability and investing top of mind. 

Millennials are CommSec’s largest trading generation

CommSec’s trading data shows that 37% of all our investors are Millennials.

How Millennials traded in 2026

The Millennial rankings looked different across each category. On the ASX, the top traded names are all individual shares. In US markets, the list included company shares alongside exchange-traded products. In ETFs, the rankings spanned Australian, US and international markets.

The bottom line

Millennials are financially aware and tech savvy but constrained by structural challenges. Their approach to money is pragmatic: balance responsibility (saving, investing, debt management) while living in the present (experiences and convenience).

The majority of Australian millennials are still trading Australian owned companies but there’s a growing number of investors also exploring international companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq.

To learn more about how to invest in global companies, see International Trading.

Across the generations

CommSec’s analysis of our customers’ profiles and activities across FY26 has uncovered some fascinating insights into Aussie traders and trading behaviour broadly, regardless of their generation. Among our key findings:

• More Australians are investing, both domestically and especially internationally We saw growth of 11.5% in trading customers over the past fiscal year, with trading up 27% on FY25 and traded value up 33%. New domestic stock accounts were up 10% and new international accounts up 16%

• Aussie traders are more engaged overall The proportion of our customers who completed a trade in the 12 months to May ticked up by 0.2% compared to the same timeframe to November 2025. We also saw more people trade within the first 90 days of opening their trading account

• Women are a bigger force in the trading market than ever before Female investors are driving a bigger share of new money into markets, at 42% of first-time investors in FY26, up from 36.3% two years ago. They now represent 34% of our active investors, up slightly from FY25, and they tend to trade more in ETFs than their male counterparts, who generally trade more in direct equities

• Investors are getting younger, especially first-time investors Traded value for our under-40 customers increased 54.9%, compared with 30.3% for customers aged 40+. The under‑40 share of first‑time investor activity climbed from 63.2% in FY24 to 66.2% in FY26