Does financial stress affect investing behavior?

According to the Motley Fool's 2026 Financial Stress and Investing Survey, 67% of active investors said financial stress or anxiety causes at least one behavior that can work against long-term investing goals, including avoiding investing, panic-selling, compulsive portfolio-checking, and delaying decisions.

Why do people make emotional investing decisions?

Fear and excitement are the two primary drivers: the Motley Fool's 2026 Financial Stress and Investing Survey found that 19% of respondents have sold investments out of fear of losing more money, and 17% have bought into something due to excitement or fear of missing out.

How does financial stress affect retirement savings?

Among Americans who said their retirement savings situation negatively affects their mental health, 48% reported that the resulting stress causes them to save less or stop saving altogether, according to the Motley Fool's 2026 Financial Stress and Investing Survey.

Financial Stress and Investing: How Stress Can Shape Investing Behavior

New survey data on how stress around investing drives behaviors like avoidance and panic-selling across every generation.

By Jack Caporal – Updated May 7, 2026 at 4:32 PM EST | Fact-checked by Parker Hicks

Key Points

67% of investors admit stress influences harmful behaviors like panic-selling.
25% of non-investors are deterred by psychological barriers, not just financial ones.
Automating contributions and scheduling check-ins can mitigate investment stress.

Loading paragraph...

41% of investors feel anxious about their investments at least some of the time. That includes 10% who feel that way 5–6 days a week and 5% who feel it every day.
Younger investors are more frequently anxious about investments. Among Millennial investors, 51% report investment-specific stress three or more days a week, and among Gen Z investors, 49%. Gen X (32.6%) and Boomers (23.6%) report it at substantially lower rates.
For roughly 1 in 4 non-investors, the barrier to investing is psychological rather than financial. Affordability is the top obstacle at 57%, but 14% don't trust the markets, 11% find investing too confusing or intimidating, and 3% cite the emotional stress of monitoring investments directly. Those three responses share a common thread, even if the specific reason for not investing differs.

Emotional stress about investing specifically is not the primary driver keeping would-be investors, but for more than a quarter of non-investors, the obstacle is psychological rather than financial.

Loading paragraph...

34% of investors say stress causes them to check their portfolio more than they'd like. Frequent portfolio-checking can cause emotional reactions to short-term volatility, which can lead to worse investing outcomes over time.
29% say stress causes them to delay making investing decisions. Sitting in cash, putting off contributions, avoiding rebalancing all compound over time, especially for investors with long horizons.
23% say stress causes them to avoid investing altogether. Unlike not being able to afford to put more money into the market, for nearly a quarter of active investors, anxiety alone is enough to keep cash on the sidelines.

Younger investors, the group most likely to report frequent investment anxiety, are also the most likely to report stress-driven behavioral changes across every category the survey measured.

Loading paragraph...

19% said they have sold investments out of fear of losing more money. Selling into a downturn locks in losses and prevents benefiting from any future recovery.
17% said they have bought into something due to excitement or fear of missing out. FOMO-driven purchases risk being made at or near price peaks, when hype is the strongest and prices are most disconnected from fundamentals, and can push investors towards speculative assets.
11% said they have held on to a losing investment, hoping it would recover. Loss aversion is well documented in investment research and is associated with holding underperforming assets for far longer than rational analysis would suggest.

Emotion-driven decisions are significantly more common among younger respondents. Nearly half of Gen Z respondents (48%) and Millennials (45%) reported at least one emotion-driven decision, compared to 32% of Gen X and 21% of Boomers.

Loading paragraph...

17% said market volatility has a major impact: they feel significant stress or anxiety when markets move. Millennials are most likely to fall in this category at 19%, compared to 13% of baby boomers.
39% said market volatility has some impact: they notice it but can manage it. Gen Z leads at 45%, followed by millennials (40%), baby boomers (36%), and Gen X (35%).
45% said volatility has little or no impact on their emotional well-being. That group is the largest among Gen X (49%) and baby boomers (51%), and smallest among millennials (40%), consistent with the broader pattern of younger investors carrying more emotional exposure to markets.

Market volatility is, by definition, temporary, but its emotional effects are not. Investors who respond to short-term swings with stress-driven behavior risk making permanent decisions in response to temporary conditions.

Loading paragraph...

32% of all respondents said their retirement savings situation affects their mental health negatively. That figure rises to more than half among those who describe themselves as significantly behind, making retirement savings one of the clearest stress triggers in the survey.
24% said their retirement savings affect them positively. That group is heavily concentrated among respondents who are on track or ahead, where nearly two-thirds report a positive mental health effect.
Among those experiencing retirement-related stress, 48% say it causes them to save less or stop saving altogether. Only 30% say the stress motivates them to save more. For most, the anxiety causes avoidance.

Avoidance is sharpest among Millennials. Among Millennial respondents who said retirement savings negatively affect their mental health, 53% reported saving less or stopping entirely as a result, the highest rate of any generation in the survey. That can create a self-reinforcing cycle, where anxiety about a retirement savings shortfall makes the shortfall more likely to grow.

Loading paragraph...

FAQs

Loading faq...

Loading accordion...

About the Author

Jack Caporal is the Research Director for The Motley Fool and Motley Fool Money. Jack leads efforts to identify and analyze trends shaping investing and personal financial decisions across the United States. His research has appeared in thousands of media outlets including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and CNBC, and has been cited in congressional testimony. He previously covered business and economic trends as a reporter and policy analyst in Washington, D.C. He serves as Chair of the Trade Policy Committee at the World Trade Center in Denver, Colorado. He holds a B.A. degree in International Relations with a concentration in International Economics from Michigan State University.

TMFJackCap