Fidelity plans to offer no-fee investment services for teenagers who want to trade stocks and ETFs
- Fidelity Investments will offer no-fee investing accounts to 13- to 17-year-olds.
- The firm said parents can use the accounts as a "teaching moment" to discuss finances.
- Analysts have previously said Gen Z will be the most disruptive generation ever to markets.
Teens will soon be able to use a new no-fee service from Fidelity Investments to buy and sell stocks, exchange-traded funds, and Fidelity mutual funds.
The firm plans to offer investing accounts, along with debit cards and savings accounts, to 13- to 17-year-olds whose parents or guardians also bank with Fidelity, according to a Tuesday press release.
Parents can see what their teens are doing in the account and discuss the reasoning behind their child's financial decisions. "Fidelity is committed to responsibly supporting young investors," Jennifer Samalis, senior vice president of acquisition and loyalty at Fidelity Investments, said in the press release.
The youth account, which will become a standard brokerage account with more options when the teen turns 18, will also offer educational resources. In a pilot program of the new offering, Fidelity said 90% of parents and guardians used the account as a "teaching moment" to discuss saving, spending, and investing.
"Opening the account can create new opportunities for parents/guardians to engage their teens about money concepts, then allow the teens to independently take action and learn by doing," Fidelity spokesperson Robert Bearegard said to Insider in an email.
The offering comes amid the firm's push to attract new investors. Fidelity added 1.6 million accounts for individuals 35 years old or younger in the first quarter of this year, which is more than three times the amount from a year earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the firm.
Bank of America analysts have previously said Gen-Z will be "the most disruptive ever" to the stock market, pushing it to focus more on technology, sustainability, and climate change, and less on classical institutions.
Social media platforms like Reddit and TikTok have helped drive the new wave of investors, along with trading apps such as Robinhood and Webull.
At the beginning of the year, an army of day traders on Reddit drove the GameStop stock price to surge from single to triple digits in an effort to squeeze short sellers. The rally signaled the power of a new wave of investors and a new trend of investing in so-called "meme stocks" like AMC and GameStop, among others.