China’s Gen Z Day Traders Trust in Chatbots and Move Markets
This cohort has become an increasingly important driver of investment growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
When he started trading in 2020, Lito Chen followed mostly well-trodden advice, tucking his modest university student savings into the kinds of blue-chip stocks like liquor companies that analysts had touted as safe bets. They proved to be anything but, erasing his nest egg and eroding his confidence in mainstream financial analysis. So when doing research for his next round of investment picks in the first half of 2024, Chen turned to what many young people know best: artificial intelligence chatbots and the social media hive mind. Investing in a mix of tech, defense, mining and other stocks recommended by internet friends and chatbots like Kimi and Zhipu, he’s clawed back his earlier losses—and then some. “I’ll rely more on AI for stock selection in the future,” says Chen, a 24-year-old student in Shanghai. “Some of the stocks it picked for me really just kept rallying nonstop.”
Young, technologically savvy, even defiant, Chen represents China’s newest generation of retail investors. These bold Generation Z traders have earned a nickname in China: Xiao Dengs, or “little guys”—and their swelling ranks are propelling the country’s more than $14 trillion stock market.