More Americans Than Ever Own Stocks
Pandemic, zero-commission trading ‘created a whole generation of investors’
4 min
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.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
4 minA sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.
The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.
The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.
This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.
The debt behind the AI build-out
Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.
Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.
JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.
The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.
That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.
A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.
When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.
Inflation changes the calculation
September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.
The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.
CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.
Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.
Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.
The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.
China adds another source of pressure
Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.
Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.
The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.
That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.
A reset rather than the end of the boom
The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.
What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.
The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.
More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.
For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.
Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.
The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.
Fact box
Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent
Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent
Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent
SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent
US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually
Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion
Rising rates, construction inflation and shrinking investor confidence are pushing Australia deeper into a dangerous housing spiral that monetary policy alone cannot fix.
Many of the most-important events have slipped from our collective memories. But their impacts live on.
