Asia's Young People Are Heavily Betting on Tech Stocks: BBC Uncovers the Z-Generation Investment Craze, Willing to Endure 10% Plunge to Not Miss Out

As a teenager, Michelle Huynh, the eldest daughter of Australian immigrants, made a promise to her family to become a millionaire by age 30. The 26-year-old describes this as a "somewhat silly promise," inspired by the sacrifices her non-English-speaking parents made to support the family. But she is now trying to make that dream a reality by investing her savings in the stock market. "Times have changed dramatically—investing has become a necessity," says Huynh, who works in sales at a tech company. "It feels like our purchasing power is shrinking. This is the only way to fight back."

This year, a tech-driven stock market rally has brought her closer to that goal. Over a third of her investment portfolio is allocated to tech stocks, which, as of mid-July, had surged 50% year-to-date, adding A$31,000 (US$21,700; ¥147,000 RMB; NT$702,000) to her savings. However, due to what she calls a "wild period" in the sector, those gains have since pulled back to around A$22,000.

Huynh says she is prepared for such volatility and views these investments as a long-term bet. The surge in tech stocks, driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, has drawn in a wave of retail investors, many of them in their twenties and early thirties, despite warnings from some analysts that the AI hype may be overblown.

Glenn Tan of consulting firm Providend says retail investors have been swept up in the frenzy, with social media and marketing aimed at non-professionals further fueling the sentiment.

The U.S.-based Nasdaq, dominated by tech stocks, has risen about 10% this year, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 index has climbed over 20%. But many tech stocks have experienced sharp swings—both up and down.

This volatility is most evident in South Korea. The Seoul-based Korea Composite Stock Price Index (Kospi), which includes tech giants like SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, has risen over 50% since January. This surge has attracted a wave of retail investors, locally dubbed "ants," further amplifying volatile trading.

"I can probably count on one hand the people not investing right now," says Korean investor U Chan Lee. "Even full-time housewives like my mom, who never cared about stocks before, are now paying attention."

But the Kospi has also seen dramatic swings. After hitting a record high above 9,000 in June, the index plunged to around 6,500. This year, trading in the benchmark index has been halted seven times due to the "circuit breaker" mechanism, designed to curb panic selling when the index drops 8%.

These declines have raised concerns about margin trading—borrowing to invest—prompting South Korean regulators to step in and curb the practice.

Lee, 30, sold many of his stocks last year during the Kospi’s surge, fearing the market was becoming "overheated." Since then, he’s adopted a strategy of buying when prices dip and selling a few days later when they rise.

Some analysts warn that such volatility reflects the risks of investing in tech stocks. As governments and corporations pour hundreds of billions into AI development, skeptics are questioning whether the technology’s profitability can justify such massive investments.

Lale Akoner, an analyst at investment platform eToro, says people often bet on "optimistic outcomes" or "the most visible winners," judgments not based on companies’ actual profitability. She says retail investors often see price drops as buying opportunities, treating every sell-off as a "test of faith," but they need to understand "how painful a valuation reset can be."

Jacqueline Choi from Korea says she missed out on bigger gains by not investing more before the Kospi rally, and was forced to sell Hyundai Motor and Samsung Electronics shares when she needed cash.

"Why didn’t I put all my savings into SK Hynix stocks back then, or buy more Samsung shares?" the 28-year-old now asks herself. "I really should have invested more—what I could earn from investing might be far more than from my day job."

Earlier this month, chipmaker SK Hynix listed in New York, raising $26.5 billion—the largest foreign IPO in U.S. history. Some of Choi’s friends have already invested thousands of dollars in stocks.

Shyan Lim, a 24-year-old business student in Singapore, is a staunch believer in AI-related stocks, allocating about three-quarters of his savings to tech shares. He admits there have been "nerve-wracking" days when his investments dropped as much as 10%, but he’s willing to take the risk.

Overall, his bets have paid off so far. In October last year, he invested S$23,000 (US$17,800; ¥120,000 RMB; NT$576,000) in chipmakers Intel and Micron. Today, those stocks are worth about S$100,000.

"It feels like I’m one step closer to retirement," says Lim. "While I’m young, I feel I can afford to take this risk. When I’m older, I probably won’t hold such positions."

Recent graduate George Lee says he has over half his investments in tech stocks, so he’s well aware of the resource disadvantages and other challenges ordinary traders face.

"Investing isn’t just about luck, though luck does play a role," says Lee. "As long as a company’s fundamentals haven’t changed, I can ride out the volatility because I have time for my stocks to keep running."

But not everyone is willing to bet everything on tech stocks. Singaporean student Ayush Deb, 23, says tech makes up only about a third of his portfolio. Even so, he says it’s been tough—he recalls his heavy investment in memory chips losing over 10% in a single day in June.

That same day, online investment forums buzzed with discussions on "who got hit the hardest."

"I’ve experienced the highs and lows of tech stocks, but this sector is genuinely hard to understand," says Deb, who started investing in his late teens. "I try to filter out the noise in this industry and focus on making informed stock picks."

Deb says he felt "FOMO"—fear of missing out—when he failed to buy shares in Elon Musk’s space and AI company SpaceX during its June listing. But despite the stock briefly surging to $225, it later fell below its $135 IPO price, as some analysts questioned its profit outlook.

Despite the hype around SpaceX, Lim says he avoids newly listed stocks to give himself more time to study a company’s operations. He adds he takes the same approach with Anthropic and OpenAI—two leading AI developers aiming for trillion-dollar valuations in their upcoming IPOs.

In Sydney, Michelle Huynh, who creates her own financial social media content, says investing can be intimidating for young professionals, as such skills aren’t widely taught in schools. She also says staying on top of news is an "underrated skill"—and recently, based on her research, she’s turned her attention to energy and metal stocks, believing they’ll benefit from massive investments in chip manufacturing.

"I think many young people are afraid of investing—and that fear is justified. If you don’t know what’s really happening, investing can feel like gambling."