A quick resolution to the election and the Federal Reserve’s latest rate cut may have pushed stocks to new highs, but individual investors are waking up to a new set of concerns, dampening their expectations for highly charged market returns in the near term. semester, according to Investopedia’s latest survey of its readers.

While more than two-thirds of respondents describe their mood as either cautiously upbeat or upbeat, nearly forty percent say they are at least somewhat worried about recent market events, up eight percentage points from early October.

More than half (55%) think the stock market is overvalued, although most respondents (64%) say they do not change how much money they invest regularly. A small percentage of respondents indicate that they are investing more and making riskier investments, due to the election results and the recent interest rate cut. Fifteen percent say they are investing less now because of concerns about a potential recession and elevated valuations across the stock market.

Crypto enthusiasm returns

President-elect Trump campaigned heavily for the pro-crypto crowd, speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee in July. Among the promises he made were to make the United States the cryptocurrency capital of the world, to never sell the Treasury’s Bitcoin reserve, which today stands at 297,000 Bitcoin, and to allow the Treasury to mine its own Bitcoin. While many of these promises may never be fulfilled, enthusiasm for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has soared – along with prices – since the election results became clear. It should come as no surprise that the number of respondents (25% percent) who indicated that they now own Bitcoin and other tokens is as high as it has ever been.

What investors are buying now

In recent months, respondents have consistently chosen exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as the investment product they continue to buy more of, followed by stocks and index funds. But the crypto bug can be contagious, and twelve percent of respondents indicated they buy more of it when prices rise, placing it just below CDs.

What would you do with an extra $10,000?

For most of 2024, survey respondents chose individual stocks or ETFs as their top choice for where they would allocate an additional $10,000 if they had it. Individual stocks now top the list, according to Investopedia’s latest survey, slightly edging out ETFs, which were their top picks in early October. Cryptocurrency cracked the top 10 on the list for the first time ever, with 12% of respondents choosing it as their top choice for where to put an extra $10,000. What’s notable is that many of those surveyed say asset classes, including cryptocurrency and individual stocks, are overvalued at the moment.

Higher rates worry investors

With the re-election of President Trump and a Republican sweep of Congress, investor concerns have shifted to the potential impact of new economic policies on their portfolios. More than half of those polled chose the possibility of higher tariffs as their top concern, closely followed by US relations with China. While inflation and the election itself dominated readers’ list of concerns all year, they now face the potential impact Trump’s campaign promises of higher tariffs, lower taxes and more government spending could have on their future returns.

Trump 2.0 and investors’ portfolios

Survey respondents had mixed feelings about which of the president-elect’s policies might have the biggest impact on their portfolios. While nearly 65% ​​of respondents indicated that higher tariffs will negatively impact their returns, nearly 70% believe that lower corporate tax rates and more individual tax credits will be beneficial to their investments. Just over half of the respondents believe that deregulation in the financial and energy markets will have a positive effect on their portfolios.

Readers seem uncertain about future stock market returns

While Investopedia readers generally feel confident about their portfolios today, the future looks a little murkier. Optimism is climbing about short-term returns over the next six months, but optimism about returns over the next ten years fell. Some 41% of respondents believe returns will be at least 5% over the next 6 months – up 8 percentage points from early October, and the highest it has been all year. Almost two-thirds, or 67%, think the 10-year yield will be at least 5%, slightly lower than in early October.