When people ask who owns U.S. equities, the standard answer—that households hold about 42%—is misleading. According to an analysis of Federal Reserve Z.1 data by Nasdaq Chief Economist Phil Mackintosh and U.S. Economist Michael Normyle, the true household share is closer to 63% once stocks held through intermediaries are added back. That 20-percentage-point gap matters for how markets are understood and regulated.
The Fed’s Leftover Category
The Z.1 financial accounts treat households as a residual category. When stocks are held through pensions, mutual funds, life insurance, advised accounts, or ETFs, they are recorded under the intermediary rather than the household. As a result, the official household figure understates the real exposure of American families to the equity market.
Mackintosh and Normyle add those indirect holdings back to the household sector. The adjustment lifts the household share from about 42% to roughly 63%. Direct stock ownership, by contrast, accounts for just 30% of the total—meaning most household equity exposure is professionally managed rather than held in brokerage accounts by individual investors.
Concentration at the Top
The ownership is also highly uneven. The top 1% of households own about half of all household equity. That group often accesses the market through private banks or wealth advisers, further blurring the line between direct and indirect ownership.
For the remaining households, equity exposure is typically wrapped inside retirement accounts, pooled funds, and insurance products. These structures mean that market rules affect a far broader group of Americans than the direct-ownership statistics suggest.
A Shifting Mix Since 2017
Since 2017, the composition of equity ownership has changed. ETFs, high-net-worth advised accounts, and international investors have gained share. Active mutual funds and pensions have lost ground. These shifts reflect how capital is increasingly pooled and managed across borders and through lower-cost vehicles.
The rise of ETFs is particularly notable because these funds hold stocks on behalf of households while appearing as institutional owners in the data. The same is true of advised accounts, which sit between households and the underlying securities.
Why the Ownership Mix Matters
About 63% of company financing comes from U.S. households, according to the analysis. That figure underscores the stake that retirement accounts and other pooled retail assets have in the functioning of equity markets. Market structure debates—covering trading rules, disclosure, and access—therefore reach well beyond professional investors.
The authors argue that markets should work for all households. When the majority of equity capital traces back to families, the rules governing those markets need to serve the retirement accounts and pooled assets through which most households participate, not just the institutions that appear on ownership registers.
