America’s millionaires are feeling upbeat about the outlook for the stock market and the economy, even if most of us are not quite so sanguine.
A new survey by Fidelity Investments, which was based on responses from 1,020 people with $1 million in investable assets outside real estate and a retirement fund, shows millionaires bought U.S. stocks more than any other asset in the past year.
By comparison, in the face of a darkening economic outlook, the average U.S. investor has sought out the relative safety of fixed income investments since the financial crisis struck in 2008.
In June, for example, $8.5 billion was pulled out of equity mutual funds, while bond funds saw inflows increase by more than $3.2 billion, according to Morningstar’s Direct Fund Flows report.
Millionaires, on the other hand, embraced equities in the 12 months ended in March, with 20 percent of them buying individual U.S. stocks, according to the survey. Thirteen percent of respondents said they had put their assets in cash, while 11 percent purchased exchange-traded funds and 10 percent bought individual U.S. bonds or domestic stock funds.
There are 5.1 million millionaire households in the United States, according to a May report by the Boston Consulting Group -- the world’s largest tally. The average respondent in Fidelity’s survey was aged 61 and had $3.05 million in investable assets.
Fidelity also found that millionaires are the most positive they’ve been since the annual study started in 2006. Their confidence in the future is driven by positive feelings on the potential of business spending and consumer spending, and they’re also upbeat about the future value of real estate, the survey showed.
Eighty-six percent of the millionaires surveyed said they were self-made, and 26 percent of the self-made millionaires struggled financially when growing up. Only 14 percent of the survey respondents were born wealthy, while 2 percent of that group were classified as “very wealthy” when growing up, Fidelity said.
