I’m sitting here doing some completely unrelated research and I stumbled across this figure which I’ve seen multiple times in the past. It has always surprised me. As the markets become extremely volatile this month I wonder, what is the impact on the bottom 50% of Americans? If you look at this chart it barely even registers when stacked with other assets. Real estate is their primary asset.

What’s interesting is if you look at this breakdown by percentile historically. The top 10% own 89% of all equities. While the entire bottom 50% own just .6%.

Now let’s take a look at the top 50% vs. the bottom 50%. We already know the bottom 50% of Americans own just .6% of equities. The top 50% own 99.4% of the balance of equities.

If you’re looking for the source of political turmoil in our country I don’t think we need to look much further than the wealth gap. Half of our population has no vested interest in corporations in America. I can’t imagine turmoil subsides any time soon for our country until we address the wealth gap.