How Much Does the Average Rich Person Have in the Stock Market?

The banal marketplace was the superior operator of wealthiness successful 2025, according to CNBC.

The value of firm equities and communal money shares held by the top 10% roseate from $39 trillion to $44 trillion. Meanwhile, the latest Federal Reserve data highlighted the attraction of banal ownership among the top 1%. As of Q3 2025, the top 1% alone owned half (50.2%) of each U.S. corporate equities and communal money shares.

Let’s analyse however stocks thrust wealthiness maturation astatine the apical and cardinal takeaways based connected the proposal of a wealth counselor.

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Backed by decades of data, the banal marketplace has generally performed better than fixed-income assets. In galore ways, this makes sense given that stocks come with more uncertainty and risk.

Elaine Loo, associate concern advisor astatine the Stan Clark Financial Team at CIBC Wood Gundy, pointed out that from 1920 to 2019, an capitalist who owned U.S. and Canadian equities would person seen an mean yearly instrumentality of 10.9% (8.2% erstwhile adjusted for inflation).

By contrast, during that aforesaid period, bonds returned 4.9% (2.3% erstwhile adjusted for inflation). Put different way, the investor who held diversified equity holdings saw returns 3.6 times greater than the enslaved owner.

This does not mean past performance guarantees aboriginal results. And to reiterate, stocks travel with much risk and heightened volatility.

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To analyse this question, GOBankingRates spoke with Paul Ferrara, elder wealth counselor astatine Avenue Investment Management. Ferrara advised that the astir effective approach, for astir people, is “long-term thinking, wide diversification and goal-oriented planning.”

A MarketWatch file by economist Gary Smith corroborated Ferrara’s outlook, showing that simply buying and holding an S&P 500 scale money has outperformed astir large assemblage endowment funds. From 2016 to 2025, the mean yearly instrumentality connected endowment funds from the top Ivy League colleges was 9.2%, compared with 13.7% for the S&P 500.