Comments on: Total health of US Investors

Question: Total health of US Investors

monkeywithhat — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:20:28 -0800

How would you measure the total health of individual investors? So the U.S. has a large number of individual investors actively managing their money. Does anyone measure that for both number of accounts and total amount in them? Trying to see if we can track are people more actively investing or less actively investing as opposed to parking their money in mutual funds.

By: dfriedman

dfriedman — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:26:23 -0800

You can look at mutual fund flows but that doesn't really answer your question. People can buy and hold stocks for their own accounts and don't necessarily need to do so through mutual funds.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the total health of individual investors".

By: mullacc

mullacc — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:33:57 -0800

Have you already been through the info available from the EBRI?

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:57:35 -0800

You can get some of the information you want through the fed's Flow of Funds data, which repays careful study. See, for example, page 4 of this report, especially lines 13-18.

By: Mr.Know-it-some

Mr.Know-it-some — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:49:55 -0800

Another data source is the Investment Company Institute, the national organization of mutual fund companies. For example, Figure 1.2 on p.10 in their factbook is Share of Household Financial Assets Held in Investment Companies. It increased steadily from 3 percent to about 20 in 2000 and has been pretty stable since. But funds not in mutual funds are not all actively invested, so the flow of funds is probably better for the big picture.