According to Gallup, 71% of middle-income Americans are invested in the stock market, and they’ve watched their fortunes rise and fall repeatedly during the volatile period since President Donald Trump announced his trade tariffs on April 2.
But as the official start of summer approaches, those who resisted the urge to panic-sell during the frightening declines have largely seen their discipline pay off.
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It’s impossible to gauge what the average middle-class investor might have gained or lost because the concept is a construct, regardless of the investor’s socioeconomic class. Even if it were possible to put a dollar amount on the mean middle-class earner’s stock investments, that would ignore critical variables like that investor’s:
Type, size and number of stock or fund holdings
Portfolio makeup
Portfolio diversity
Degree of leverage from options trading or margin borrowing
Trade frequency
Fees and expenses
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For context on just how differently two otherwise similar middle-class investors can perform, consider that Warner Bros Discovery Inc. (WBD) cratered on April 2 and retained a 24% overall loss through June 10. Conversely, Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) has been one of the top performers in the post-tariff era, adding most of its 74% year-to-date gains since April 2.
Two middle-class stock pickers with identical incomes and backgrounds who rolled the anti-diversification dice by purchasing identical amounts in either stock on April 1 would have had radically different outcomes between then and mid-June.
A more reliable metric might be the major indices that so many middle-class households invest in through their 401(k)s, IRAs, index funds and ETFs.
Between April 2 and June 10:
The S&P 500, the benchmark index for the U.S. stock market, gained 6.16%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks the blue chips, gained 1.31%.
The tech-heavy and more volatile Nasdaq gained 11.57%.
The FTSE All Cap Index, which includes much of the global stock market with 10,000 small-, mid- and large-cap companies in both developed and emerging markets, gained 7.22%.
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The average among all four is 6.57%, which is roughly what typical middle-class earners might have gained since April 2 if they followed the conventional advice of diversifying their portfolios with a blend of blue chips, growth stocks and foreign equities, and holding their positions regardless of market behavior.
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