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Younger investors have lately been buying shares of cruise lines, two Wall Street strategists told CNBC on Monday.
TD Ameritrade‘s JJ Kinahan said Royal Caribbean and Carnival Corp. have been two stocks that the brokerage firm’s millennial clients have added to their portfolio in the month of March.
“At first you might be like, ‘Oh my god, that seems like a terrible idea,'” Kinahan, the firm’s chief market strategist, said on “Closing Bell.”
“But again, if you’re a millennial client you may look at that and say, ‘Longer term, these make sense to me.'”
The younger investors particularly started to add exposure to the cruise lines in the last two weeks of the month, Kinahan added in a follow-up call.
In addition to a long-term belief that the cruise lines could recover from their coronavirus-driven sell-offs, Kinahan said younger clients may be interested in the stocks for a personal reason.
“They may be some of the first customers who are willing to jump back in to do cruises,” he said.
Lindsey Bell, chief investment strategist at Ally Invest, said on “Closing Bell” the firm’s younger clients have recently liked cruise line stocks, too.
“We’ve seen that on our Ally Invest platform as well,” Bell said of the cruise-stock buying. “And they very well may be the first to get back on the boat.”
The cruise industry has been among the hardest hit sectors of the economy due to the coronavirus, with the industry largely halting operations. Cruise ships also have been home to high-profile COVID-19 outbreaks, raising some long-term questions about the industry.
The stocks of Royal Caribbean and Carnival have suffered mightily in 2020 as a result.
Shares of Carnival are down almost 80% so far this year, even after the stock surged 20.3% following reports that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bought shares in the company that amount to an 8.2% stake. Carnival closed Monday’s session at $10.21 per share.
Royal Caribbean’s stock also surged Monday, rising 21.4% to $29.61. It remains down 77% for the year.
Beyond the cruise stocks, Kinahan said Uber also continued to be a favorite of TD Ameritrade’s millennial investors in March compared to its traditional clients.
Kinahan offered another interesting data point on TD Ameritrade’s millennial investors: March was the first month their portfolios showed less exposure to the volatility in the market than for traditional clients.
“The reason I think you’re seeing that, is as adults, this is the first true financial crisis many of them have lived through so I believe they scaled back a little bit last month due to that,” he said.
