Australians, along with the rest of the world, have been captivated by the unprecedented turmoil unfolding almost every day in the US.
With that turmoil has come big rises and falls on Wall Street and the beginning of a change in our market of long-term national significance.
For the first time in our history, Australians aged between 18 and 40 are turning their back on the local bourse and playing the markets in the US, and that plunge into American action is made easier by the new instruments available – US options.
ASIC is undertaking an inquiry into the decline in total listings on the ASX. That listing decline is an early sign of a much deeper problem.
Since the 1850s gold rush, Australians have poured money into booms and busts and those that got out in time made fortunes. But right now the Australian market is seen by up and comers as boring and contracting.
We are dominated by a bunch big banks miners and industrial companies. The market is also dominated by the large institutions who receive insider briefings from top management making it difficult for traders to make a dollar.
We have the technology stocks that are usually also listed on Nasdaq and there has been good performance in some of our gold explorers. But by volume of companies the ASX listings market is dominated by a series of small enterprises which treasurer Jim Chalmers wants to put out business by starving them of capital with his tax on unrealised gains.
Australians in younger aged brackets are going where the market action is – the US. But this is just the beginning. Options trading will spread to US shares.
There are a number of broking houses that offer US options, but the one that has captured much of the imagination is the Tiger operation. The brand ‘Tiger’ was used very successfully in Australia by Esso when attached to petrol in the 1960s.
Now it is being revived to attract Australians to trade in US options.
Back around 2018, Tianhua Wu and his team at Singapore-based UP Fintech realised the potential of mobile phones to make options trading very easy and millennials plus Generation Z would embrace the opportunity.
And the highest risk taking Australians are among the 18 to 38 age brackets in those generations that dominate the trade.
The growth in numbers is staggering, driven by the those who are employed in high-tech enterprises, plus banking and finance.
Few could have imagined the huge market fluctuations created in anticipation of the Trump presidency then even greater swings when the 47th President took office.
There is now complete unpredictability, forcing traders into the unknown. But that puts young traders on a more equal footing than the professionals. In the first half of 2025, there was a record-breaking 62.7 per cent year-on-year increase in Australians trading US options.
The Australian rate compares with a 44 per cent global increase in investors trading US options in the first half of 2025, compared to the same period 2024.
If the traders believe Elon Musk that the US is headed to recession, they can take out put options. Big institutions believe that the US will come out of the turmoil in good shape, particularly given the big tax cuts.
Those that take the conventional view can support it with call options and/or mix them with put options to protect capital.
The attraction of gambling on the US stock market is being promoted by major social media campaigns urging people to subscribe to ‘how to trade’ videos promising big gains by embracing techniques to beat the big institutions.
The attraction of these videos and other promotional material to younger people in the high-tech, plus banking and finance sectors is that they are not confident that I have a clear career path so want to make money secure themselves.
The career nervousness has boosted share trading in the past – but the action was in Australian markets.
I will discuss the obvious moves required in later commentaries, but a good starting point would be a delegation to the Treasurer to explain to him that his unrealised gains tax will starve over half the listed stocks of capital.
Jim Chalmers might be surprised at the number of up and comers in his electorate of Logan, south of Brisbane, which also has many people who are struggling. If the Logan up and comers succeed, there will be more job prospects in Logan.
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