How much of the total U.S. stock market owned by Americans and how much is owned by foreign interests?

We found 70 years worth of Federal Reserve data on the U.S. and foreign ownership of corporate equities answering that question, spanning the entire modern era for the U.S. stock market. Our first chart shows the value of those investments on a linear scale from 1 January 1952 through 1 January 2022.

Meanwhile, if you're a fan of logarithmic scale data, follow this link....

One thing that log-scale data cannot do well is visually communicate the relative share of foreign versus U.S. ownership. Our next chart focuses just on the share of ownership to reveal the share of the U.S. stock market owned by foreigners has increased from 1.7% in 1952 to 16.5% in 2022.

The foreign-owned share of U.S. corporate equities peaked at 16.6% on 1 October 2021.

References

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Rest of the World; U.S. Corporate Equities; Asset, Level. [Online Database]. Last Updated 9 June 2022.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. All Sectors; U.S. Corporate Equities; Asset, Market Value Levels. [Online Database]. Last Updated 9 June 2022.

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