Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
If the Market Crashes, Who Owns Enough Stock to Even Care?
Since 81% of all stocks are owned by the top 10%, a stock market crash has little effect on the bottom 90% of Americans.
It is assumed without question that the stock market is some quasi-sacrosanct barometer of the U.S. economy. But who even cares if the market crashes? Only the top 10% who own it. Yes, millions of (generally government) workers have an indirect stake in stocks and bonds via their state/union pension funds, but it's still informative to look at the distribution of who actually has a stake in the market's rise and fall.
This data is from pre-recession 2007, so I suspect ownership has become even more skewed to the top 5% as those below liquidated stocks to pay the bills as household income and housing equity plummeted.
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