The Fourth Turning Explained | A Real Vision Interview With Hedgeye's Neil Howe (Part 3)

Grant Williams: You and I have talked off-camera about passive investing and the way this is going. That almost feels like a natural way for this to go that the risk averse money goes into passive instruments, which to your point, you said don't trade actively day to day, but the air comes out of markets.

Neil Howe: Millennials love to have targeted funds. Have experts put it away for me. Let's strike up a date, 2042, that's when I retire and other ones, they don't want to think about it. And I hope the government guarantees it. It's that attitude. And it's interesting, the same idea that Gen Xers love markets. I've never met a Gen Xer that didn't love the market and they didn't love the mystery and the romance of a startup company. The idea, face to face with the markets, how exciting is that? I don't sense that with millennials. I talked to them all the time and they just don't get it. All the risks, ruined overnight. How can you plan ahead and so on?

And there was very much the same contrast between the GI generation, the 1950s, and the last generation. The last generation love markets and then remember the 1920s, it was exciting. But the 1950s is more of the GIs and the last, right? And then the last we're fading. And I think Xers have to realize that their infatuation with the unregulated marketplace and going face to face, mano a mano with the markets is going to be an elder point of view ultimately. And it's going to weaken with them as they get older. And I think you will see with the millennial generation, a lot more emphasis on community, the collective and the planning.

Grant Williams: We keep coming back to this, this idea of a crisis, which in previous fourth turnings has been wars. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a war. It just has to be a crisis. 

Neil Howe:  And it has to be crisis and it has to have a sense of urgency.