Picture a man my age tonight. He is in the recliner with the results on TV, refreshing the map on his phone like it owes him money.
He is worried about what Washington does next. Taxes. Spending. The rules on his IRA.
Fair worries, all of them, and I share most of them. But the number that shapes his next five years was set before a single ballot was cast.
It is how much of his savings still sits in stocks. And he is at the age when money comes out of the account, not in.
If tonight has you wondering what a new Congress could change, one firm put together a short guide on exactly that question.
Now the number no election can move. Here is the share of 401(k) savers, by age, who run heavier in stocks than the benchmark for their age.
15%
Savers aged 45 to 49 holding more stock than their age benchmark
38%
Savers aged 65 to 69 doing the same
50%
Savers aged 70 and older doing the same
The benchmark is a target-date fund. That is the autopilot fund that shifts from stocks to bonds as your retirement year gets closer.
Look at the shape. The share is lowest in the late forties and highest at the very top. The people with the least time to recover carry the most stock.
Now the part most people miss.
At 45, a bad market year is a sale on the things you already planned to buy. You keep buying, and you wait it out.
At 72, you are selling. The required withdrawal comes due every December, up market or down. Not a forecast. A schedule already printed.
Sell in a bad year, and those shares are gone before the recovery comes. Planners call this sequence risk. Once withdrawals start, the order of good and bad years matters more than the average.
The fear has a plain shape. It is the year you are 86, still here, and the account is not.
Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and why the mix matters more each year.
The honest catch cuts both ways. Heavy in stocks is not automatically wrong. Someone with a pension and a full Social Security check can afford more risk than the benchmark suggests.
And target-date funds are not free. The fee is small, but it runs every year. Half of the oldest savers are not following the autopilot anyway.
So the real question is simpler than the election. How much of your account could you watch fall by a third without selling?
Some people answer it with a slice of physical metal. One gold firm explains how that works inside an IRA.
The arithmetic
Share of 401(k) participants whose stock allocation is higher than Fidelity’s age-appropriate target-date benchmark: 50% at 70 and older, 38% at 65 to 69, 15% at 45 to 49. Fidelity Investments, Q1 2026 Retirement Analysis, as reported by Kiplinger, June 25, 2026. Required minimum distributions are due by December 31 each year after the first: IRS, Required Minimum Distributions FAQs. The age-86 picture and the fall-by-a-third question are Boomers Trade’s own illustrations, not forecasts.
Watch the results tonight if you like. I will be up later than I should. Tomorrow morning, open the app and find one number: the share in stocks. Ask if that is the share you would pick at your age today. The election decides who writes the rules. Your birthday already decided when you start selling.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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