WHY YOUNG INVESTORS TRADE FOR DOPAMINE
We’re currently working with a new client building an investment platform for 18 to 35 year olds across Europe, and when they came into our office for the kick off they did something more revealing than any deck.
They pulled out their phone, said “this is how I actually invest,” and opened Robinhood, not to rebalance or plan, but to check it like a scoreboard. Positions, percent changes, what’s moving, that subtle emotional flicker that comes with it, the same micro-hit you get from sports scores, notifications, or a bet.
It wasn’t the UI that stuck with us, it was the behaviour, especially because we’re also investors in Curvo, a product built around long-term investing, calm defaults, and outcome-first design.
Put those two together and a blunt insight appears: for a growing share of young people, investing isn’t primarily about compound interest, it’s about risk-taking that feels legitimate, respectable, and even responsible. It’s gambling, but with better UX and a culturally approved story, and as AI gets layered into the investing experience, the danger isn’t just bad decisions, it’s that the entire loop becomes frictionless, personalised, and easier to justify.
TREND 1/ RESPECTABLE RISK
For many first-time investors, “investing” is a rebrand, not a strategy. Gambling still carries stigma, investing carries status, so the same appetite for volatility and thrill gets packaged as self-improvement.
The aesthetics do the work: clean charts, confident language, creator-led narratives, and a sense of participation in the future. You are not placing a bet, you are learning finance. You are not chasing dopamine, you are building conviction.
The result is a culturally approved arena for taking swings, where the suit makes it feel mature even when the behaviour is pure risk-seeking.
SIGNAL/ Language shifts from “save and build” to “play and win,” and new investors adopt trading behaviours early.
IMPACT/ Speculative behaviour normalises, and long-term investing needs stronger defaults to compete with excitement.
TREND 2/ THE SCOREBOARD LIFE
Always-on markets turn the portfolio into a living score. The habit shifts from owning assets to monitoring a number, and the product becomes less about access and more about checking.
Small movements become micro-emotions. Big movements become identity events. This is variable reward at financial scale, and it trains the same compulsions we’ve already seen in feeds and notifications, except the reinforcement is money, not likes.
When the experience is built around movement, the user learns to crave movement, and slow, boring, healthy investing starts to feel like nothing is happening.
SIGNAL/ Daily and intraday checking becomes normal, and “market mood” tracks user mood.
IMPACT/ Anxiety and churn increase, risk tolerance becomes more reactive, and platforms are pushed to design against compulsive checking.
TREND 3/ AGENTS WITH HANDS. AND SHIELDS.
What people buy is increasingly a story they can join, not a business they can value. AI, crypto, a meme, a war, a macro theme, a movement, a charismatic founder, a viral chart. The unit of meaning is social.
You do not just want to be right, you want to be early and publicly right. Platforms and creators compress complex realities into tradable scripts, and the market becomes theatre. This is not new, but the velocity is, and it creates an environment where investing behaves less like allocation and more like cultural participation with a price tag attached.
SIGNAL/ Investment decisions are explained as stories and identities, not risk-return tradeoffs.
IMPACT/ Volatility clusters around narratives, misinformation spreads faster, and education shifts from “how markets work” to “how narratives move markets.”
TREND 4/ AI AS FRICTION REMOVAL
AI is often positioned as the cure, but AI is a multiplier. If a user wants discipline, AI can automate good habits. If a user wants thrills, AI can industrialise them, surfacing endless “opportunities,” lowering the friction to act, and producing convincing rationale for whatever the user already wanted to do.
The most subtle risk is emotional: AI can make risk feel safer than it is, because “my AI checked it” creates a sense of protection even when the volatility is unchanged. The casino doesn’t disappear, it becomes personalised, always-on, and confidently narrated.
SIGNAL/ Rising trade frequency, higher confidence in risky actions, and users citing “AI said” as justification.
IMPACT/ Miscalibrated risk taking scales, compliance pressure rises, and trust shifts from institutions to tools, even when tools are wrong.
TREND 5/ GUARDRAILS BECOME THE PRODUCT
This is where the category has to go if it wants to earn trust at scale. Platforms can optimise for attention and activity, or they can optimise for outcomes and wellbeing.
The next differentiator will be guardrails that feel like product, not compliance: separating long-term investing from speculative play, adding friction to high-risk actions, rewarding consistency over activity, reducing compulsive checking, and designing AI to calm rather than excite.
We learned too late that social media wasn’t just content, it was a brain-training environment, and investing apps are becoming the same thing, except the reinforcement is money. This time, we can’t pretend we didn’t know.
SIGNAL/ “Healthy investing” features become competitive differentiators, not nice-to-haves.
IMPACT/ Brands win on trust, regulators focus on behavioural harm, and product design shifts toward long-term outcomes.
BE HONEST ABOUT THE MOTIVATION
A lot of young people don’t invest because they discovered compound interest. They invest because it is the only form of gambling society applauds. If we design as if that isn’t true, we repeat the mistakes of the last internet. If we design with that truth in mind, we can still build healthier defaults, create clearer boundaries between wealth-building and thrill-seeking, and use AI to reduce compulsion rather than amplify it.
WE'RE FINH
We build the future - carefully. If you’re building an investment product for the next generation, the real challenge isn’t just performance, it’s behaviour.
We help teams design platforms that grow without turning finance into a compulsion loop, with outcome-first UX, safety-by-design defaults, and clear product boundaries between investing and entertainment.