Fewer American families owned stock directly in 2025 than in 2022, yet the value of the public equity that families held rose for every income group.
The Fed’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, published in October 2026, puts direct stock ownership at 19.0 per cent of families, down from 21.0 per cent in 2022.
How many families own stock and how much they own are two different questions, and a research report from The Prehn Institute, an independent research institution, measures the second. Its author is Felix Nikolas Prehn, economist and former investment banker, and its title is “The Hidden Regressive Tax.”
The preprint, dated 25 September 2026, is free to read on Zenodo, a public research repository, under an open licence. Its tables run through the second quarter of 2026, a later point than the 2022 survey it cited.
The Fed, not the report, supplies the 2025 survey numbers. The report cited the 2022 edition, so the newer ownership rate sits outside its argument. The 2025 edition appeared after the report did, and the report never analysed it.
The rate fell while holdings rebounded
The Fed calls the 2022 reading the largest between-survey rise in direct stock ownership on record. The 2025 survey, it says, suggests that part of the jump was temporary, though the new rate is still well above the 15.2 per cent recorded in 2019.
Holdings moved the other way. Among families that hold stock directly, the middle holding rose from $16,400 in 2022 to $30,000 in 2025, in 2025 dollars. The Fed says that almost erased the earlier fall in median holdings between 2019 and 2022. The average among those same families rose too.
The two measures differ in what they weigh. A median marks the family in the middle of the line, while an average adds everything up and divides by the number of holders, so a handful of very large portfolios lifts it. For financial assets as a whole, the Fed notes that a wide gap between the two reflects the disproportionate share held by some families.
Gains across the three groups of stockholders
A separate section of the same survey follows families that hold publicly traded stock, directly or through funds and retirement accounts, and sorts them by usual income. The Fed says the indirect route is much more common than direct ownership and usually less liquid.
After adjusting for inflation, the average increase in their holdings from 2022 to 2025 was around $13,000 for the lower half of families ranked by usual income, or 15 per cent. The Fed ties the rise in value to the rise in public equity markets, even though a slightly smaller share of families held publicly traded stock in 2025.
For the upper-middle group, the families between the 50th and 90th percentiles, the increase was $72,000, or 30 per cent.
For the top tenth it was $367,000, or 16 per cent.
The direction is the same in all three groups, and the amounts are not. The percentage gains printed for the bottom half and the top tenth look alike. The dollars behind them do not, because a family’s dollar gain depends on how much it held to begin with. A family with a small fund balance and a family with a large portfolio can both report a gain, yet the dollar amounts behind those gains are far apart.
The report’s tables
The report’s own numbers come from a different source. Because the Distributional Financial Accounts group households by wealth rather than usual income, the survey’s income groups cannot be lined up against them. The report’s figures are nominal, drawn from those accounts through the St. Louis Fed’s FRED database, with the author’s calculations.
For the second quarter of 2026, the report puts the corporate shares and mutual fund holdings of households in the lower half of the wealth ranking at $0.37 trillion. The top 1 per cent held $32.89 trillion.
Its table of gains covers the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2026. Over that stretch, the bottom half’s increase in wealth from corporate shares was $0.25 trillion. For the top 1 per cent, it was $21.7 trillion.
The case for counting amounts
The report’s fourth section states the choice directly. After citing the 2022 survey, it sets out how it will treat ownership: “For the purpose of this report the precise ownership rate matters less than the amounts: whatever the proportion of the bottom half that holds some shares, it holds 0.6 per cent of the total.”
That sentence is a decision about what to measure. An ownership rate answers whether a family holds any stock at all, and it can move a few points in either direction between surveys. An amount answers how much is held.
Both survey facts hold at once: fewer families own stock directly, and those that do hold more. The report sets the head count aside and follows the dollars.
About Felix Nikolas Prehn
Felix Nikolas Prehn, also known as Nikolas Prehn, is an economist and former investment banker, born in Germany. He is a tech founder: 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 a public advocate for animal rescue.
About The Prehn Institute
The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Felix Nikolas Prehn. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. It publishes research on the financial markets and provides instruction in professional market practice.