What Investors Want

Investors want to see their invested money grow. All investors pursue different demands and strategies as to how they invest their money.

Reasons to invest money also vary from country to country. The age of the investors also influences their investment behavior.

Geographic differences

Different countries, different customs? Reasons to invest are different in most countries. People set different priorities for their investments.

In Canada, there is a particularly strong tendency to accumulate assets for retirement. 78 percent of investors cited this as the reason for their investment. Saving for retirement is the most important investment objective for 70 percent or more of all investors surveyed in Australia, the USA, and Great Britain.

European and Asian countries show greater diversity in their investment targets. In Germany and France, for example, almost a quarter of respondents said they invest their money to save for emergencies. In Germany, the alleged world champion in saving, only 40 percent said they wanted to save for retirement. 27 percent of German investors want to save for emergencies, 16 percent for larger purchases.

Other motivations for investments prevail in the United Arab Emirates and China. Retirement is less important to investors there. Interestingly, in the United Arab Emirates, saving to start a business (31 percent) is a primary reason for investing.

Another important motivation for Arab investors when investing is education and its associated costs. 16 percent said they wanted to accumulate assets for this purpose. This is the highest figure of all the countries surveyed. Indian and Chinese investors also cited education as an important reason for their investment behavior.

In China, 42 percent of investors want to invest their money to start families or manage their inheritance. This motivation is not mentioned at all in European countries, the USA, or Canada.

Overall, it is clear that more than half of those surveyed (56 percent) in all countries invest to build up assets for retirement.

Age-related differences

Investing is also a generational issue. For example, so-called Millennials invest differently from the 68 generation.

Baby Boomers (1946-64), Generation X (1961-81) and Millennials (1981-2000) are in very different phases of life and therefore have different ideas and goals that they pursue in their lives and in their investments.

It is not surprising that, with age, goals shift from riskier investments to higher returns. Later in life, goals focus more on retirement and asset accumulation. For example, it is not the baby boomers, but Millennials who are most interested in building assets to pass on to their heirs. They are also willing to pay the most for investment advice in order to achieve the best possible result. In other words, baby boomers want a comfortable pension and are more concerned about investment security than Millennials are.

Millennials are considered to be the generation that will inherit the largest wealth transfer of $30 billion in history. With these assets, Millennials will also shape their generation in terms of investment behavior.

Nearly half of the young generation's respondents said that technology is the preferred sector for their investment, according to a study by Accenture. Furthermore, the emerging investors were interested in healthcare (12.1 percent), energy (11.5 percent), and real estate (9.9 percent).

Why do you invest? Join the discussion and write us a comment below.

The information stems from "The Visual Capitalist" and the agency "Raconteur."

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist