This question came to me from the article…
- Q: I notice you intentionally leave the stock market out when you talk about Trump’s economy. Why? The stock market is soaring and making people a lot of money, and you’re ignoring it. That doesn’t seem right at all.
You’re right, I have intentionally left the stock market out. Not because it is doing poorly. Quite the opposite. The stock market has been one of the bright spots in the Trump economy.
But here’s the part that always seems to get lost when somebody points to a soaring stock market and tells me how well Americans are doing:
Who owns the stock market?
According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Distributional Financial Accounts, the Bottom 50% of American households holds about $370 billion in corporate equities and mutual-fund shares. The Top 10% holds about $56.9 trillion. Read those numbers again:
- Bottom 50%: $370 billion.
- Top 10%: $56.9 trillion.
The Top 10% owns roughly 88% of this market. The Bottom 50% owns about 0.6% (6 tenths of one percent).
Listen to me…
That means the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the country own 154 times more of the stock market and mutual funds than the bottom 50% of Americans!
And if that isn’t lopsided enough…the Top 1% alone holds roughly $32.9 trillion…about 51% of the entire total.
So, yes. The stock market is soaring. And, yes. People are making a lot of money. But before we start celebrating how Trump’s booming stock market is making Americans richer, perhaps we ought to ask one rather inconvenient question:
Which Americans exactly?
Let’s make the numbers ridiculously simple. If the market value of these investments increases another 10%, and the gains were distributed according to today’s ownership, for every $100 of additional wealth created:
- About $88 would go to the Top 10%.
- The Bottom 50%? About 60 cents.
That’s quite a rising tide…not!!
Apparently some of us own yachts, while half the country owns the loose change under the seat cushions.
That doesn’t mean ordinary Americans receive nothing from a rising market. Millions of middle-class Americans have 401(k)s, IRAs, pensions and other retirement investments, and those absolutely matter. But they don’t change the basic arithmetic.
Stock-market wealth in America is extraordinarily concentrated at the top…the top 10%…not the lower or middle-class. When the market rises, the people who own the overwhelming majority of it receive the overwhelming majority of the dollar gains…the top 10% by a HUGE margin!
So why have I intentionally excluded the stock market when discussing how American households are doing? Because the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq tell us how markets are doing. They don’t tell us how the typical American household is doing.
If you want to tell me the stock market is doing great, I’ll agree with you…because it is.
But if you want to use that booming market as proof that Trump’s economy is making Americans broadly prosperous…or even the economy is doing great…then we need to talk about who actually owns that prosperity…the rich…the top 10%.
Because when the Top 10% owns roughly 88% and the Bottom 50% owns about 0.6% (yeah, less than 1%), the booming stock market isn’t evidence that everyone is getting rich. It’s evidence of just how differently Americans participate in the gains.
Just to be clear…add lower-class and middle-class together and this is what it looks like…
The Bottom 90% of American households (lower/middle-class) combined own about 12% of these assets. The Top 10% (the rich) own about 88%.
That further proves the extreme concentration of wealth in the United States. Think seriously about the “K-Economy” I’ve been writing about for months now.
Thank you for reminding me just how disparate the US economy is.
Now the question is…how long will the vast majority of Americans tolerate that disparity.
Related Articles –
- Feedback : “K” Economy (1/3/2026)
- Economics 101 – Part #1 (5/26/2026)
- Economics 101 – Part #5 (5/30/2026)
- K-shaped economy is “definitively over.” (8/15/2026)
What do you think? Share your thoughts.