Markets
The Wave of Millennial Home Buyers is Coming
Every industry is trying to solve its own version of the “millennial riddle”.
The biggest demographic wave in history continues to crush everything in its path, leaving businesses and investors scrambling to adapt. First it hit retailers, restaurants, and media, but soon it will leave its mark on other established industries such as finance, healthcare, and real estate.
But the wave hits each sector in a different and unique way.
In the case of real estate, the millennial buying frenzy was already supposed to have kicked off – but it’s now on hold for a variety of reasons. We know that millennials still definitely want to buy homes, but the reality is that they are currently set back by challenges such as student loans, a low savings rate, and housing prices.
As a result of this unexpected lag, the home ownership rate in the United States has collapsed to record-tying low of just 62.9%.
Millennial Home Buyers are Coming, but Delayed
Today’s infographic from FirstTimeHomeFinancing shows the predicament that many millennials find themselves in: they believe that owning a home is tied to the American Dream, but lack the wherewithal to get into the market.
A whopping 65.3% of millennials associate the American Dream with buying a home – more than any other generation. However, many millennials are not able to make home ownership a reality just yet.
Why the Wave is Delayed
Despite most millennials entering their twenties and early-thirties, home ownership is still a long way out for many of them. Almost one-third (33.2%) of millennials believe they are 3-5 years out from buying a home, while another 24.4% think that they are at least five years away.
Why are they waiting? The majority of potential millennial home buyers are strapped for cash with less than $1,000 in savings. Meanwhile, the average student loan balance is $37,173 per student, which makes taking out a mortgage more challenging and less responsible.
There are other factors, too. The median age for marriage is as at a record-high, and it’s harder to enter the real estate market these days. Credit standards have changed since the Financial Crisis as well, making it more difficult to get approval.
While this is all a little bit discouraging, we do know that 91% of millennials want to be eventual homeowners. When the timing is right to make that plunge, it will send ripples throughout the market.
Markets
Visualizing the Rise of the U.S. Dollar Since the 19th Century
This animated graphic shows the U.S. dollar, the world’s primary reserve currency, as a share of foreign reserves since 1900.

Visualizing the Rise of the U.S. Dollar Since the 19th Century
As the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. dollar made up 58.4% of foreign reserves held by central banks in 2022, falling near 25-year lows.
Today, emerging countries are slowly decoupling from the greenback, with foreign reserves shifting to currencies like the Chinese yuan.
At the same time, the steep appreciation of the U.S. dollar is leading countries to sell their U.S. foreign reserves to help prop up their currencies, in turn buying currencies such as the Australian and Canadian dollars to help generate higher yields.
The above animated graphic from James Eagle shows the rapid ascent of the U.S. dollar over the last century, and its gradual decline in recent years.
Dollar Dominance: A Brief History
In 1944, the U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency under the Bretton Woods Agreement. Over the first half of the century, the U.S. ran budget surpluses while increasing trade and economic ties with war-torn countries, expanding its influence as the world’s store of value.
Later through the 1960s, the U.S. dollar share of global foreign reserves rapidly increased as political allies stockpiled the dollar.
By 2000, dollar dominance hit a peak of 71% of global reserves. With the creation of the European Union a year earlier, countries such as China began increasing the share of euros in reserves. Between 2000 and 2005, the share of the dollar in China’s foreign exchange reserves fell by an estimated 15 percentage points.
The dollar began a long rally after the global financial crisis, which drove central banks to cut their dollar reserves to help bolster their currencies.
Fast-forward to today, and dollar reserves have fallen roughly 13 percentage points from their historical peak.
The State of the World’s Reserve Currency
In 2022, 16% of Russia’s export transactions were in yuan, up from almost nothing before the war. Brazil and Argentina have also begun adopting the Chinese currency for trade or reserve purposes. Still, the U.S. dollar makes up 80% of Brazil’s reserves.
Yet while the U.S. dollar has decreased in share of foreign reserves, it still has an immense influence in the world economy.
The majority of trade is invoiced in the U.S. dollar globally, a trend that has stayed fairly consistent over many decades. Between 1999-2019, 74% of trade in Asia was invoiced in dollars and in the Americas, it made up 96% of all invoicing.
Furthermore, almost 90% of foreign exchange transactions involve the U.S. dollar thanks to its liquidity.
However, countries are increasingly finding alternative options than the dollar. Today, Western businesses have begun settling trade with China in renminbi. Looking further ahead, digital currencies could provide options that don’t include the U.S. dollar.
Even more so, if the U.S. share of global GDP continues to shrink, the shift to a multipolar system could progress over this century.
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