Talking About Stocks: Pathways into Financial Engagement

Before anyone buys a stock, they start paying attention. Where does that attention come from? We follow 6.8 million Reddit users across thousands of communities and reconstruct what each was talking about in the year before their first post about stocks. They arrive along distinct routes: from budgeting and retirement forums, from economics and politics, from crypto, and from gambling. The route stays visible in the language and stated motive of the first post, and in the securities that follow. Savers concentrate on index funds, crypto entrants on bitcoin proxies, gamblers on sportsbooks and casinos. Entry is uneven over time, and months of high uncertainty change who arrives more than how many. Composition appears to predict market reactions: gambling-dominated episodes show larger price and volume responses than saver-dominated ones. That difference is selection, not price impact. Three observable security characteristics absorb much of it, volatility above all, and it vanishes when the same company is compared with itself. Where people come from shapes what they look at, not how the market answers