US stocks edge up following Dow's record day

[dmallind]

4. off by a factor of five, and that excludes pension funds

54% own stocks in 401ks, IRAs or investment accounts. Plenty of the rest have pension funds which nigh universally invest in stocks.

Not to mention that the customers, vendors and employers of the vast majority of Americans likewise have investments in equities and are in some part driven to spend more or less based on the gains or losses the see. There's a reason the stock market crash of 1929 sparked a depression and that was when only a very few people really did own stocks. The idea that anyone, with the possible exception of barter-based subsistence farmers, is isolated from the equity markets in the US is naive. Even drug dealers need cash buyers, and those buyers must get that cash directly or indirectly from the willingness of corporations to spend, to employ, and to raise money, all of which depend in large degree on the equities market.