Boomers Gone Wild: How Older Investors Are Shattering Retirement Portfolio Dogma in 2025

Wall Street's playbook is collecting dust as silver-haired traders flip the script.

Forget bonds and blue chips—today's retirees are rewriting the rules with crypto wallets fatter than their 401(k)s. The generation that invented 'sell in May' is now HODLing through crashes like it's 1999.

Yield Chasing or Revolution?

Financial advisors clutch their pearls as clients demand exposure to assets that didn't exist during the Reagan administration. Meanwhile, pension funds quietly allocate to blockchain infrastructure—the ultimate 'OK Boomer' mic drop.

The Retirement Reboot

Decades of 'slow and steady' conditioning got bulldozed by DeFi APYs that make CDs look like charity donations. Who needs dividend aristocrats when you can stake stablecoins between golf rounds?

One hedge fund manager sniffed: 'They'll panic sell at the first 10% dip.' Joke's on him—these are the folks who lived through 18% mortgage rates and Black Monday. Try shaking diamond hands forged in the analog era.

Key Takeaways

• Older investors who are closer to retirement are more likely than younger people to increase their equity allocation.
• The assets in standard retirement portfolios, like 401(k)s, shift as investors age and typically move toward less risky investments to protect from market volatility.
• Investors may be doing this to reach their retirement goals, T. Rowe Price said.
  

As investors approach retirement, they are more likely to adjust their investment portfolios than their younger counterparts—and the MOVE many of them are making goes against traditional advice.

Many retirement investment portfolios, like 401(k)s, have a mix of equities, bonds, or other fixed-income offerings. This mix, which usually changes as investors age, diversifies portfolios and reduces the risk of loss from volatility in the stock market or economy.

Standard portfolios typically become safer as investors age, meaning they shift to more stable assets instead of volatile ones like stocks. However, in a recent study by brokerage firm T. Rowe Price, older investors who adjusted their portfolios were more likely to say they increased the amount of equity in their portfolios.

Most Portfolio Shifts Coming From Older Investors

From 2019 to 2024, almost three-fourths of older investors changed their equity allocation, according to the study. Meanwhile, just under half of younger investors, those 20 to 34 years old, made alterations to their portfolios.

Half of older investors said they increased the amount of equities in their portfolios, compared with 34% of young investors doing the same.

“[This highlights] the potential desire for more dynamic portfolio management in the lead-up to retirement,” T. Rowe Price said in a press release.