ROI-Move over real estate, Wall St now drives US spending: McGeever

USA-WEALTH/HOUSEHOLDS (REPEAT, ROI, COLUMN, PIX, GRAPHICS):RPT-ROI-Move over real estate, Wall St now drives US spending: McGeever

ORLANDO, Florida, Sept 16 - U.S. household wealth rose at a record pace in the second quarter, thanks to an unprecedented rise in the value of equity holdings. This is good news for the economy, as it keeps the "wealth effect" burning bright, but it also means growth is increasingly vulnerable to a downturn on Wall Street.

Federal Reserve figures last week showed that household net worth leaped $12.8 trillion in the April-June period, up 7% from the previous quarter, thanks to a $10.7 trillion jump in the value of equity holdings. Total net worth reached $196 trillion, which is a record 828% of disposable personal income .

In other words, Americans have never been richer, and it's largely down to the soaraway stock market.

Equities now account for 46.6% of U.S. households' financial assets and 34% of total assets, both record shares.

The problem, of course, is the distribution of that wealth. More than half is in the hands of the wealthiest 1% of households, and more than 87% of all equity holdings are owned by the richest 10% of households. Would their spending patterns be significantly altered by a 10% correction on Wall Street? Not at the very top, though perhaps a bit at the lower end of that cohort.

But a bear market — a decline of 20% or more from the peak — could be a different proposition, especially if it’s a sudden slide. Even the richest households' propensity to spend would be affected.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, estimates that the top 20% of income earners account for nearly 60% of all consumer spending. Other economists say that footprint is smaller, but either way, given that consumer spending accounts for around 70% of U.S. gross domestic product , a slump on Wall Street would be felt broadly.

The so-called "wealth effect" — people feeling richer and spending more as asset prices rise — is nothing new in the U.S. What’s interesting is that it’s increasingly being fueled by stock markets rather than real estate, which was the primary driver for decades. Even though real estate wealth is still rising, the rate is nowhere near the pace seen in equity values.

Real estate used to be considered the cash-generator of choice for Americans, as many homeowners took out home equity loans to finance consumption. In the mid-2000s, before the subprime mortgage crash and global financial crisis that followed, real estate accounted for close to 50% of U.S. households' total assets. In the second quarter of this year, that share was a record low of 32.4%, according to analysts at Ned Davis Research.

U.S. household consumption remains healthy, even with annual wage growth falling to 3.1% in August, which is the lowest in four years and negative in real terms. Spending is being supported by dipping into savings, taking on debt, and the wealth effect. The stock market is now a much more important driver of that than real estate.

"These increases in consumption must be related to increases in household net worth, and primarily that is being driven by the equity market," says Joe Kalish, global macro strategist at Ned Davis Research.

To be sure, far more people are impacted by the housing market versus Wall Street because home ownership is spread much more evenly across the country. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. households — 65.0%, according to the Census Bureau — own their homes. But spending is primarily driven by consumers with significant exposure to Wall Street.

The risk then is that an equity market slowdown, especially in the red-hot AI sector, could have a much larger impact on the real economy than previous corrections. Wealth effects today are "unusually sensitive" to the performance of a narrow set of companies, according to Goldman Sachs analysts.

Earlier this year, they outlined two alternative scenarios: an upside scenario, where AI-related stocks surge 55% and other stocks rise 20% over the next year, implying a 30% overall increase; and a downside one in which AI stocks slump 40% and other stocks fall 15%, implying a 20% overall decline. They estimated the first scenario would boost consumption growth by 0.7 percentage points, and the second would lower consumption growth by 0.3 percentage points.

Wall Street peaked last month. Households have never been richer. Are we at an inflection point, or does the consumption juggernaut keep powering on?

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