US Household Shares Reach Record 48.2% of Financial Assets as Ownership Remains Concentrated

Corporate shares made up a record 48.2 per cent of the financial assets held by US households and nonprofit organizations at the end of June 2026. That sector-wide reading sits alongside a sharply different picture of who owns those assets: research by Felix Nikolas Prehn reports that the richest 1 per cent of households held 50.9 per cent of corporate shares and mutual funds, while the poorest half held 0.6 per cent.

The figures describe two distinct aspects of the market. The Federal Reserve’s Z.1 Financial Accounts track the composition of a broad sector balance sheet. Its Distributional Financial Accounts, used in research by The Prehn Institute, divide household holdings by wealth group. Read together, they show both the scale of shareholdings and their concentration, but the percentages have different denominators and shouldn’t be treated as directly comparable measures.

A record share of financial assets

At the end of the second quarter of 2026, households and nonprofit organizations held approximately $74.0 trillion in shares, directly and indirectly, out of $153.5 trillion in financial assets. The resulting 48.2 per cent share was the highest in the quarterly series, which begins in 1945. It had been 44.7 per cent in the preceding quarter.

The calculation includes shares held directly as well as through investment funds and retirement arrangements. It measures the mix of financial assets at a point in time. When housing and other nonfinancial assets are included in the balance sheet, shares accounted for 34.0 per cent of total assets.

The change in values during the quarter also shaped the picture. The Federal Reserve reported that the sector’s wealth rose by $12.8 trillion, largely reflecting gains in corporate share values. A higher share of financial assets can result from rising share prices, new purchases or slower growth in other assets such as deposits and bonds. The ratio by itself doesn’t identify how much each factor contributed.

Long swings in the share of assets

The record reading follows decades of large shifts in the weight of shares. They accounted for 30.0 per cent of financial assets in the fourth quarter of 1968, then 11.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 1974. The share dropped further, to 9.5 per cent, in the second quarter of 1982, before rising to 38.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2000.

It later fell to 19.0 per cent in the first quarter of 2009. By the end of 2025, it had reached 45.4 per cent, ahead of the new high in the following year’s second quarter. These readings chart changes in the sector’s asset composition, but they don’t distinguish a price-driven rise from a change in how much households invest or from shifts in other financial holdings.

Ownership differs sharply by wealth group

Prehn’s paper, The Hidden Regressive Tax, examines asset holdings and gains associated with asset-price movements following monetary expansion. Published as a preprint on Zenodo, it draws on the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts to report holdings across four US household wealth groups.

For the second quarter of 2026, the paper says the richest 1 per cent owned 50.9 per cent of corporate shares and mutual fund holdings. The poorest half owned 0.6 per cent of the national total in that category. Those figures describe each group’s share of all holdings in the category. They don’t show what proportion of an individual group’s own balance sheet is invested in shares.

That distinction matters when comparing the distribution figures with the 48.2 per cent Z.1 reading. The latter compares shares with all financial assets held across households and nonprofit organizations. The distribution figures compare each wealth group’s holdings with the national total for corporate shares and mutual funds. The Prehn Institute’s breakdown of share ownership and the Z.1 accounts therefore answer different questions.

How monetary conditions may affect asset values

Prehn’s analysis also considers channels through which monetary expansion may affect financial markets. The portfolio-balance effect is one: when a central bank buys safe bonds from private investors, those investors may seek alternatives, including corporate bonds or shares. Additional demand for those assets could affect their prices.

The paper describes three other channels: changes in discount rates that influence the present value of future income; borrowing supported by the collateral value of assets; and signals from central bank policy that can affect investors’ willingness to take risks. These are proposed mechanisms for understanding how financial conditions may be linked to asset values. The Z.1 share ratio doesn’t determine which mechanism, if any, drove the second-quarter result.

The distribution of ownership gives those mechanisms a different significance across households. If asset prices change, the balance-sheet effects depend in part on who owns the assets. Prehn’s figures show that corporate shares and mutual funds are concentrated among the wealthiest households, while the sector-wide accounts show that shares now occupy a historically large place in financial assets.

Deposits and total household wealth

Shares are only one part of the distributional picture. The Prehn Institute’s published figures put the poorest half of households at 5.5 per cent of total deposits in the second quarter of 2026. Their share of aggregate household wealth, after liabilities are deducted, was 2.3 per cent. Each percentage is measured against the national total for its own category, offering context for the group’s 0.6 per cent share of corporate shares and mutual funds.

For market watchers, the next readings will show whether shares maintain their unusually high weight in the sector’s financial assets and how the distribution of holdings changes. The current data establish a record sector-wide ratio and a wide gap in share ownership by wealth group; they don’t explain what caused either pattern or how it will develop.

About Felix Nikolas Prehn and The Prehn Institute

Felix Nikolas Prehn, also known as Nikolas Prehn, is an economist and former investment banker born in Germany. He co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc.), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. He is also a painter and sculptor and an advocate for animal rescue.

The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Prehn. It publishes research on financial markets and provides instruction in professional market practice.