The wealth of the richest 1% of Americans has exceeded the record figure of 44 trillion dollars

The assets of the top 1 percent of US citizens, the richest share of the population, reached a record 44,600 billion dollars at the end of the fourth quarter of last year. According to the latest data of the Federal Reserve Bank, the US central bank, the end-of-year stock rises have inflated the portfolios of American scrooges, increasing their wealth by another two trillion dollars.

This one percent of the US population, according to the Fed's definitions, includes all citizens with assets exceeding 11 million dollars. In the final three months of 2023, the value of stock holdings and mutual fund shares held by these individuals rose from $17.65 trillion in the third quarter to $19.7 trillion.

Their real estate assets also appreciated slightly, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, but this was offset by a decline in the value of their economic assets, which essentially canceled out any other increase in their wealth outside of stocks. However, with the S&P 500 index up 10 percent year-on-year, it is likely that their assets have already surpassed the record reached at the end of the fourth quarter of last year.

This rise is part of the wealth boom following the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, since 2020, the wealth of the world's wealthiest people has grown by almost 15 trillion dollars, or 49 percent compared to the pre-crisis period. Largely thanks to the growth in share prices.

But it is precisely the securities markets that are the secret of the scrooges in the United States, as recently explained to the television station Cnbc by Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab. In fact, stocks represent a growing share of the assets of the richest 1 percent of the American population.

At the end of 2023, stock holdings represented 37.8 percent of the overall share of assets of households within this population segment, up from 36.5 percent the previous year. According to the Fed, the richest 10 percent of Americans own 87 percent of individually held stocks and mutual funds. The richest 1 percent control half of all individually held stocks.

At the end of the fourth quarter of last year, according to the Fed, the richest 1 percent of the American population held 30 percent of the nation's wealth, while the richest 10 percent owned 67 percent of all US wealth. USA.