Why are stocks inaccessible to so many Americans? There are fractional shares, and you do not have to be an accredited investor.
or is the stockmarket a "the only way to lose is not to play" kind of deal?
But yeah I’d trend towards “the only way to lose is not to play” side of things. It’s really hard to find other ways to efficiently save/grow your money, interest rates are crushed for saving money outside of the market.
There is very little, if even any way to recourse this without massive societal change. And getting such change in action is even harder.
getting water to flow up hill is massively hard. And in the foreseeable future, not possible. Until the day humanity discovers unlimited energy and move into a post scarcity society.
So play the game as much and as well as you can, and build up wealth for your family and future family. That's the only move left, unless you want to sacrifice yourself and your family's financial well-being for a cause that you nor your children will benefit from.
The "G" is also there mostly because it's the only thing that can be quantified across every company. For that reason it dominates the sampling, even though most values-driven investors care much more about the E and S.
This pegs it at 50% of private sector workers and 80% of public sector workers. https://www.pensionrights.org/publications/statistic/how-man...
Additionally, in many cases, couples may just have one person with access or contributions to the market - but this still leaves them exposed (for good and bad) to the market.
Fun story: I was interested in investing as a kid, family member opened an account for me as a minor, with enough money to pick one investment to buy and hold. It had a bad month, account went below some threshold minimum balance I didn't know about (I'm sure it said somewhere, I didn't get to choose who the account was through), and suddenly account provider started liquidating shares every month for an account fee because of a balance below some amount, and we ended up having to close the account at a loss to avoid fees eventually wiping it out.
Obviously a lot of lessons packed in there, but at the time it seemed obvious that the whole system was designed to prevent regular folks who couldn't just start with many $k accounts from buying and holding.
Now there are tons of low cost options for things like robo-investors, ETFs and index funds, monthly low value investing, etc. It's a whole different world, which on one hand is nice, but on the other leaves me with the feeling that "regular" investments are some kind of loss-leader or tool to enable some other means of profiting the big players.
Most models have the numbers of Americans living in poverty or lower class as above 50% of the US population.
It’s unlikely if even what they term “lower-middle class” owns real estate.
Even these[0] models have it at >=50% and they are at least 15 years old, and disparity has only increased since then.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
Given that stock ownership is about 55% of the public, the median household likely has at least a few shares.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
In addition, stock ownership has been on steady decline for everyone but the upper middle class.
They stick with bonds and such.
which is a shame. Stocks (or owning businesses in general) is the real way to get out of the rat race.
I wish that financial education is part of the standard school curriculum. Financial education such as what stocks are, what bonds are, and how do you "save" money and budget, and what it means to invest and what risks "mean" etc
Most people are scared of stocks because they think it's "risky" - they'll lose all their money if the company bankrupts.
While that's true, the other factors not considered is inflation risk (of bonds or, of bank savings account). The risk of not investing for the long term is just as bad.
If all you have is a sub-5% mortgage (though even that's pushing it), or a low-interest student loan, then you should put money toward retirement if you can.
On the other hand, ~15 years ago I had a 3.5% student loan, and even though rationally I should have carried that debt (making regular payments, of course), for peace of mind I paid it off as quickly as a could. I think a lot of people are in that boat, or worse, having been taught that all debt is bad for you.
Right, but near or sub inflation rate student loans are mostly a non-existent thing anymore. They're much more likely to be at 8% and because of their special treatment in bankruptcy they're usually better to pay down than other loans at similar rates.
As a child I learned how to compute compound interest then shortly after saw a TV advertisement for some kind of predatory loan (not sure if there were payday loan places in the late 80s/1990, but something like that), did the math and for a long time thought all loans were essentially scams (not realizing that the interest rates of payday loans weren't representative). ... it turned out to serve me well: there are worse financial mishaps you could make than avoiding reasonable debt. :)
a) Consumption spending
b) Real estate
c) Stocks
When middle class people hit diminishing returns on electronics and vacations, they upgrade their houses. Appetite for remodeled kitchens and bigger, nicer, better-located houses is voracious, so relatively few people satisfy it and fall through to stocks.
Making sacrifices on housing in favor of your stock portfolio is of course possible, but will get you a lot of weird looks and pressure from family, particularly if kids are involved.
Anyway, sorry to hear, that probably gets really old.
But these are largely just assumptions on my part.
Though yes it’s probably too small-potatoes for the rich rich to bother with. Mere tens-of-millions business owners are more the audience for that maneuver. Like everything else it seems one is likely to be smacked down for attempting to use it while not-rich (need enough legitimate business activity to make the wages to relatives plausible)
Only the latter "version" of this is possibly true. Nothing you said shows a discouragement to savings. At best you showed that the wealthier are more encouraged to save.
This of course is, after paying off all high-rate debt, and maxing out 401k contributions.
Would you be buying stocks if you didn't have enough to eat?
[1] https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/facts
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/58-americans-less-1-000-09000...
EDIT: Apologies, first should be 37 million Americans (NOT 37%)