Trump Accounts, Teen IRAs & Prediction Markets

March is going out like a lion. Markets are down, oil is up, and pollen is everywhere. This month we cover a new investment account you've probably heard about, a move available right now for parents of working teenagers, and a plain-English explainer on prediction markets.

We've been busy helping clients work through tax filing and life planning. Reach out if we can help on either front. And a heads up: the office will be closed Good Friday, April 3rd.

Market Update

March has been a tough month for the markets, and today is no exception. The S&P 500 is down roughly 1.75% today as President Trump said he wouldn't commit to a deal with Iran, sending oil prices climbing toward $109 a barrel.

Zooming out, the index is down about 5% year to date and has posted four straight weeks of losses. 

The culprit is pretty straightforward: the U.S.-Israel war with Iran has stoked fears of stagflation, the toxic combination of higher inflation and slower growth that last showed up in force during the 1970s oil crisis.

Energy stocks are the rare bright spot, while software and tech have been hit hard. The iShares software ETF is down over 20% in 2026 as investors worry about AI disrupting traditional software business models.

The honest summary here is that nobody knows how long the Iran conflict continues or where oil settles. What history does tell us is that markets have recovered from every geopolitical shock on record.

If moments like this have you questioning your appetite for volatility give us a call. We also built a quick questionnaire to help you think it through: dyerand.co/risk

Trump Accounts: What We Know (and What's Still Getting Figured Out)

You may have heard about Trump Accounts, the new children's investment accounts created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4th of last year. 

The basics: any child under 18 with a valid Social Security number is eligible. The funds must be invested in index mutual funds or ETFs tracking the S&P 500 or another primarily U.S. equity index, with a 0.10% expense cap. Contributions are capped at $5,000 per year, no withdrawals until age 18, and after that the account converts into a traditional IRA.

Here's where each family might stand:

• Child born 2025–2028: Eligible for the $1,000 government seed deposit.

• Child 10 or under, born before 2025: Likely eligible for the $250 Dell Foundation contribution, provided you're in a qualifying ZIP code (median household income under $150,000 — based on the area, not your family's income).

• Child over 10: Still eligible to open an account; just no free money attached to it currently.

To see if your ZIP code qualifies for the Dell contribution, you can check

trumpaccounts.guide/calculators/grant-eligibility

It pulls directly from Census Bureau data and gives you an instant answer.

Accounts don't open until July 4, 2026, and the IRS is still finalizing some of the operational rules. There's nothing you can do today. But if a child in your life is in one of those first two categories, it's worth knowing before the doors open.

Accounts like 529s, IRAs, and custodial brokerage accounts offer more advantages than Trump Accounts for families using their own money. The primary use case is receiving free money from outside sources like the government seed deposit, or contributions from organizations like the Dells. The $1,000 is genuinely worth capturing; using it as a primary savings vehicle for your own dollars is a different question.Our advice: open an account to collect whatever free money is on the table, then treat your own dollars as a lower priority until other savings buckets are filled first.

We'll keep watching as the IRS finishes writing the rules. If this is relevant to your family, reach out and we can talk through it.

Which Brings us to a Strategy That Works Right Now

If you have a teenager with a part-time job (mowing lawns, babysitting, working retail) there's a move available to you that many parents don't know about. You can open a Roth IRA in your child's name today. In fact, if your teen had income in 2025, you still have until April 15th to take action for last year’s wages.

The only requirement is earned income. Your teenager doesn't need a lot of it — they just need some. The contribution limit is the lesser of the Roth IRA annual limit ($7,000 in 2025) or their actual earned income for the year. So if your 16-year-old made $3,000 this summer, they can contribute up to $3,000.

Here's the part that tends to get people's attention: a dollar invested at 16 has roughly 50 years to compound before traditional retirement age. A $3,000 contribution made at 16, left alone at a 7% average annual return, could grow to over $75,000 by age 65. Play with the numbers here: dyerand.co/the-math

Your child doesn't have to be the one funding it. A parent or grandparent can gift the money for the contribution, as long as the child actually has the earned income to justify it.

Unlike a Trump Account, a custodial Roth IRA has no restrictions on what it can be invested in and — after the five-year rule — contributions (not earnings) can be withdrawn tax-free at any time. There's a lot of flexibility built in.

If you have a working teenager in your life, this is one of the better calls you can make. Let us know if we can help.

Prediction Markets

Kalshi and Polymarket were terms that were foreign to me this time last year, but lately I can’t seem to escape them. Gray and I have been noticing these names popping up everywhere, from financial news to political commentary, and of course more recently, March Madness. For those of you who also can’t seem to escape them either, we thought it was worth taking a moment to explain what they actually are.

Kalshi and Polymarket are prediction markets, which are markets that allow users to trade on the probability of real-world outcomes: who wins the NCAA tournament, whether the Fed will cut rates in April, will [insert politician] say [insert funny phrase] this week? Rather than betting against a house like with traditional gambling, participants trade against each other, with prices updating continuously to reflect the collective judgment of everyone in the market. When an outcome comes to fruition, its value either rises to $1 a “share”, or sinks to $0 for those who have not cashed out yet. To regulators, this looks more like a financial exchange than a casino. To skeptics, it looks a lot like an overcomplicated version of gambling. Both have a point.

What started as a niche corner of crypto has moved quickly toward the mainstream. Robinhood (financial service platform), DraftKings and FanDuel (sportsbooks) have all launched their own prediction market products, and just this week the CEOs of both Kalshi and Polymarket jointly backed a new $35 million venture fund dedicated to building out the ecosystem further. The IRS has struggled to keep up with this explosive industry growth. No formal guidance exists on how prediction market winning should be taxed, leaving participants to navigate murky territory somewhere between gambling income, investment gains, and futures contracts. Something to keep in mind if curiosity gets the better of you.

Three topics this month, and a common thread: the rules are still being written on at least two of them. We'll keep watching and keep you posted.

In the meantime, enjoy the spring blossoms and warmer weather — and if the markets have you losing sleep, you know where to find us.

— Gray & Caroline

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