Posted on 04/12/2015 10:27:18 AM PDT by expat_panama
The total privately owned stocks and mutual fund shares adds up to a soaring record total $21,169,400,000 --according to the latest Federal Reserves Flow of Funds Report. Yeah I see all the hands waving --and the big question that follows has to do with population and inflation. We went through this back on an earlier thread when the press was tootin' about how America's private wealth was supposedly at an all time high but only as a total of inflated dollars. The average American's total holdings in real dollars is still less than it was eight years ago. However, that's mainly because holdings in everything but stocks have been doing poorly, and looking at just the per capita real stock/mutual fund holdings we're seeing that the latest average has once again punched though to a new record high.
[insert collective "huh" here]
|
|||
Somehow this doesn't agree with what we've been hearing. I mean we just had this FR thread started by Red in Blue PA titled Over half of Americans have $0 in stocks and the thread's article was based on a poll commissioned by Bankrate posted April 9, 2015:
Did you miss the stock market rally? You're not alone
(--and here's an excerpt from the original Bankrate study:)
|
So what happens is the major news services just ran with it:
Let's face it doom'n'gloom pessimism sells. The left loves is because it's the basis for all the do-gooder gov't programs they want to fund, and the right loves it in hopes that it will somehow 'prove' what miserable failures all those do-gooder gov't programs have been. Back here in the real world the rest of us have been busy making our own lives better, we create wealth, and this talk about the fruits of our labor leads into two new areas of thought now. One is obviously the wealth-equality debate, and just what this average all time high for stock holdings means in terms of the majority of us who live on Main Street and not on Wall Street. We know that while it's for sure the average holdings are up our Bankrate friends are insisting that the masses are broke and that the lion's share of the population still views the stock market as a 'risky scheme'. Maybe, maybe not. IMHO we still need proof and the burden of said proof is on the bankrate people. Frankly I'm not impressed so far and I'll be even less impressed when some left-winger follows up with the old globalwarming saw "aw geez, he have to raise taxes 'cuz it might be true!!!" The other major area of thought we need to go through is consideration of just how significant these stock investments really are. Or aren't. The point being that savings isn't what we're living on now and that while stocks may be a fourth of our total wealth today it wasn't that long ago that it was a twelfth. America's personal net worth is more than just stocks, there's real estate, our land and homes are not stocks. Then again, there's also life insurance reserves, pension entitlements, and business equity --those are stocks. So now we've not gotten to the point now that the value of our businesses is most (54%) of our private assets. Personally, my thinking is that a thousand people sitting by their phones ready to chat about the risky scary stock market, does not impress me. They can't be representative of the same United States that came into its own in the 1800's, prevailed on the world stage in the 1900's, and the current millennium it's ah.. OK so we're not done with that one just yet..
|
thanks!
♫♪♫"...said to myself, what a wonderful world..."♫♪♫
lol — you beat me to it!
Yet thee was an earlier the-glass-is-half-empty post today stating half of Americans had no stocks. (I suspect that half of Americans have never owned stock, regardless of the economy.)
I think you omitted some zeroes from the number.
Yes, missing 3 zeros.
I'm positive I did, I proofed that damn stuff over & over & still miss stuff. which #'s? I need to know, tx.
Ah, tx. Make that $21,169,400,000,000. Big deal so I forgot a zero. What's a zero anyway? It's nothing!
I would appreciate being placed on your Investment and Finance ping list.
Gator113
Maybe some of this is because at one time or another, the average Joe entrusted his disposable income to a broker or advisor who turned out to be more of a great salesman than anything else.
Once burned twice shy.
We often hear praise of certain members of other proffesions, (wow, what a great teacher, or just marvel at that engineering work) but I've never heard anyone say how happy they were with some particular financial advisor. While we can delegate financial authority, we can never delegate the responsibility and it always comes back to ourselves taking ultimate responsibility.
For that reason I quit Merrill Lynch 40 years ago and went for 'no-advice' brokers ever since. It's almost always not that complicated, and somehow those few complicated choices ended up being simplified really fast..
done!
This is great. It will give us a brief glimpse into the future.
An interesting read.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-12/saudi-arabia-s-plan-to-extend-the-age-of-oil
Saudi Arabias Plan to Extend the Age of Oil
The biggest exporter has let prices plummetdelaying the day when climate concerns, efficiency, and fuel switching break the worlds dependence on crude.
by Peter Waldman
5:00 PM CDT
April 12, 2015
Dang, you mean it's not really May yet? Nobody tells me anything around here...
Wait a sec, I know it's April, I was just pulling a "Bloomberg" to fit in the advance work on the next issue here...
Is there ever a benefit to meeting with a financial advisor for things like how much do we need to save for retirement, or do we need long-term care insurance, or for tax strategies, etc?
Just wondering what people think.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.