More Americans Than Ever Own Stocks

The share of Americans who own stocks has never been so high.

About 58% of U.S. households owned stocks in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances released this fall. That is up from 53% in 2019 and marks the highest household stock-ownership rate recorded in the triennial survey. The cohort includes families holding individual shares directly and those owning stocks indirectly through funds, retirement accounts or other managed accounts.

The data provide the most comprehensive snapshot yet of how the Covid-era explosion in investing has reshaped Americans’ personal finances. Stuck at home during the pandemic with extra cash, millions jumped into the stock market for the first time. The elimination of commission fees on stock trading across U.S. brokerages made investing cheaper than ever.

“It created a whole generation of investors,” said Anthony Denier, chief executive of mobile brokerage Webull U.S.

Most households own stocks through a retirement account, such as a 401(k), but more Americans in the past few years have invested in individual shares directly. Direct stock ownership increased to 21% of families in 2022 from 15% in 2019—the largest increase on record since the survey began in 1989.

As more households bought individual shares, those newer entrants invested with less money than longtime stockholders. The median value of households’ direct stockholdings nearly halved from 2019 to about $15,000 in 2022, adjusted for inflation.

When the stock market crashed in early 2020, Nick Luczak, then a sophomore at the University of Michigan, used the $57 in his checking account to open a brokerage account on Robinhood and buy whichever stocks he could afford. Once the pandemic forced him off campus to live with his parents, he began researching the market and buying more stocks.

“I said, ‘Well, I have all this spare time. There’s no reason at all I shouldn’t be trying to make the most money possible from this,’” Luczak said.

Luczak and his fraternity brothers started a group chat to discuss markets and stock picks. He said he made a profit investing in Amazon.com and watched his friends make, then lose, thousands of dollars trading meme stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings in 2021. At one point, he considered becoming a day trader.

Now, Luczak, 24 years old, is focused on long-term investing. A salesman in Dallas, he is studying to become a certified financial planner.

Brokerages in recent years have made trading free and easy. Newer apps like Robinhood and Webull helped popularise zero-commission stock trading on smartphones. Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E*Trade all eliminated commission fees for stocks at the end of 2019. Fidelity and Schwab introduced fractional stock trading in 2020, allowing individuals to buy and sell slivers of shares.

“It’s become more accessible,” said Ashley Feinstein Gerstley, a certified financial planner and founder of The Fiscal Femme. “We’ve been debunking in the last few years the myth that you have to be rich or work on Wall Street to invest.”

The share of households owning stocks increased across all income levels from 2019 to 2022. Upper-middle-income families recorded the biggest jump in stock ownership.

Over those three years, stocks climbed to new highs. The S&P 500 rose 16% in 2020 and 27% in 2021. Even after a 19% drop last year, the benchmark stock index notched gains over the three-year period. The S&P 500 is up 23% in 2023.

Stock-market gains and rising home prices helped boost household wealth. Households’ median net worth climbed 37% from 2019 to 2022, adjusted for inflation, the largest increase in the survey’s history. The median value of a U.S. household’s primary residence surged to $323,200 in 2022, surpassing levels from before the 2007 housing market crash.

Americans’ penchant for stocks is distinct. U.S. households held about 39% of their financial assets in equities in 2022, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, a higher allocation than most other countries in the data set.

That appetite for stocks has been tested since the Fed began raising interest rates last year at the fastest clip since the 1980s and pledged to keep rates higher for longer. Investors have been flocking to assets with little risk such as money-market funds that are now offering some of the highest yields in years. Everyday investors, who rarely own bonds directly, are taking a second look at assets such as Treasurys and corporate bonds.

Fernando Soto, head of private banking in Chicago at Brown Brothers Harriman, said he has fielded more questions from clients about fixed-income investing and more requests from clients to buy bonds in 2023. In his personal portfolio, he increased his allocation to fixed-income this year.

“There’s a big shift,” Soto said. “This is the new normal.”

How has the higher rate environment shifted American household finances? The Fed consumer finance survey in 2025 will likely paint the fullest picture.

The hottest crypto trade has turned cold. Some investors are saying “told you so,” while others are doubling down.

It was the move to make for much of the year: Sell shares or borrow money, then plough the cash into bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies. Investors bid up shares of these “crypto-treasury” companies, seeing them as a way to turbocharge wagers on the volatile crypto market.

Michael Saylor pioneered the move in 2020 when he transformed a tiny software company, then called MicroStrategy , into a bitcoin whale now known as Strategy. But with bitcoin and ether prices now tumbling, so are shares in Strategy and its copycats. Strategy was worth around $128 billion at its peak in July; it is now worth about $70 billion.

The selloff is hitting big-name investors, including Peter Thiel, the famed venture capitalist who has backed multiple crypto-treasury companies, as well as individuals who followed evangelists into these stocks.

Saylor, for his part, has remained characteristically bullish, taking to social media to declare that bitcoin is on sale. Sceptics have been anticipating the pullback, given that crypto treasuries often trade at a premium to the underlying value of the tokens they hold.

“The whole concept makes no sense to me. You are just paying $2 for a one-dollar bill,” said Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets. “Eventually those premiums will compress.”

When they first appeared, crypto-treasury companies also gave institutional investors who previously couldn’t easily access crypto a way to invest. Crypto exchange-traded funds that became available over the past two years now offer the same solution.

BitMine Immersion Technologies , a big ether-treasury company backed by Thiel and run by veteran Wall Street strategist Tom Lee , is down more than 30% over the past month.

ETHZilla , which transformed itself from a biotech company to an ether treasury and counts Thiel as an investor, is down 23% in a month.

Crypto prices rallied for much of the year, driven by the crypto-friendly Trump administration. The frenzy around crypto treasuries further boosted token prices. But the bullish run abruptly ended on Oct. 10, when President Trump’s surprise tariff announcement against China triggered a selloff.

A record-long government shutdown and uncertainty surrounding Federal Reserve monetary policy also have weighed on prices.

Bitcoin prices have fallen 15% in the past month. Strategy is off 26% over that same period, while Matthew Tuttle’s related ETF—MSTU—which aims for a return that is twice that of Strategy, has fallen 50%.

“Digital asset treasury companies are basically leveraged crypto assets, so when crypto falls, they will fall more,” Tuttle said. “Bitcoin has shown that it’s not going anywhere and that you get rewarded for buying the dips.”

At least one big-name investor is adjusting his portfolio after the tumble of these shares. Jim Chanos , who closed his hedge funds in 2023 but still trades his own money and advises clients, had been shorting Strategy and buying bitcoin, arguing that it made little sense for investors to pay up for Saylor’s company when they can buy bitcoin on their own. On Friday, he told clients it was time to unwind that trade.

Crypto-treasury stocks remain overpriced, he said in an interview on Sunday, partly because their shares retain a higher value than the crypto these companies hold, but the levels are no longer exorbitant. “The thesis has largely played out,” he wrote to clients.

Many of the companies that raised cash to buy cryptocurrencies are unlikely to face short-term crises as long as their crypto holdings retain value. Some have raised so much money that they are still sitting on a lot of cash they can use to buy crypto at lower prices or even acquire rivals.

But companies facing losses will find it challenging to sell new shares to buy more cryptocurrencies, analysts say, potentially putting pressure on crypto prices while raising questions about the business models of these companies.

“A lot of them are stuck,” said Matt Cole, the chief executive officer of Strive, a bitcoin-treasury company. Strive raised money earlier this year to buy bitcoin at an average price more than 10% above its current level.

Strive’s shares have tumbled 28% in the past month. He said Strive is well-positioned to “ride out the volatility” because it recently raised money with preferred shares instead of debt.

Cole Grinde, a 29-year-old investor in Seattle, purchased about $100,000 worth of BitMine at about $45 a share when it started stockpiling ether earlier this year. He has lost about $10,000 on the investment so far.

Nonetheless, Grinde, a beverage-industry salesman, says he’s increasing his stake. He sells BitMine options to help offset losses. He attributes his conviction in the company to the growing popularity of the Ethereum blockchain—the network that issues the ether token—and Lee’s influence.

“I think his network and his pizzazz have helped the stock skyrocket since he took over,” he said of Lee, who spent 15 years at JPMorgan Chase, is a managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors and a frequent business-television commentator.

More Americans Than Ever Own Stocks

Pandemic, zero-commission trading ‘created a whole generation of investors’

Selloff in bitcoin and other digital tokens hits crypto-treasury companies.