The collective value of all American publicly traded stocks is now over fifty-eight trillion dollars.

That's more than a three times increase from just a decade ago, and American public stocks are now the second largest asset class in the world behind only Chinese real estate.

These amazing returns coupled with new technology which makes getting into the market easier than ever before has mean that more Americans than ever are stockowners benefiting from this strong market!

Investing is the best tool for average people to build up wealth to fund some of their most important life goals like retirement, send their kids to college, or leaving some money behind for their children.

With more people than ever benefiting from the stock market it means what is good for investors is good for everybody.

The only problem is basically everything I have just said is complete bullshit. You are not an investor, but it's really important that you think you are.

So as we talked about record for the S&P, record for the NASDAQ, it's a big list, some big numbers in terms of number of layoffs.

It's always negative and not to make of anything that people are going through because it's very hard, but often we see companies bounce up.

Okay, so the rate of stock ownership is approaching all-time highs, but those Highs are probably lower than you expect.

According to a Gallup survey, just 61% of households own any stock at all, either directly or through a mutual trust.

This data is roughly in line with the FED estimates, which suggest that we have now surpassed the previous peak of household stock ownership that was reached just before the market crash of 2008.

More people owning more stocks is great, but the problem is that these record levels have only been hit for two reasons.

The first reason is that most of these stocks are held in 401K accounts, which would become far more common as old-fashioned employee pension plans slowly go extinct.

This is putting the market risk in retirement onto workers, but overall a diversified portfolio should be safer than an employee pension scheme,

which have been completely evaporated in dozens of high-profile corporate bankruptcies in past decades.

This is not really a sign of households owning more stocks though.

Because in the past employer pension schemes would invest their employees pension accounts into the market to help fund the liability.

So the only thing that's really changed is what entity is holding on to the shares.

The second reason that more people own shares now is because it's become easier thanks to low-cost or zero commission brokerages like Robinhood.

Now that isn't necessarily a good thing. Investing should be a part of a sound financial plan, but it will not make you rich by itself.

According to Robinhood's most recent filing, its average funded account had less than $5,000 invested in total.

Another report published by the finance firm Stilt found that almost 43% of Robinhood users had FICO scores below 650.

A survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal found that debt relief was one of the primary motivators for using the investing app. Now I don't want to crush anybody's dreams here.

But the chance of being able to generate investment returns greater than the interest payments on high-risk consumer credit is effectively zero in the long-term.

There are people who get lucky, but the vast majority of these investors would be much better taking the money they are putting into Robinhood and using it to pay down their high interest debt.

If you do happen to have a consistent strategy for generating returns above the interest rate of a low credit score car loan, then you don't have to worry about those anyway.

Because Citadel or Jane Street would probably offer you a seven-figure signing bonus.

Clearly a lot of these users are not being realistic about generating consistent investment returns. They're gambling.

It's probably no coincidence that the fall inactive users for Robinhood lines up almost perfectly with the rise in active users for sports gambling apps like DraftKings, FanDuel, and the various Casino offerings.

A report by Bloomberg found that these investors were taking their money out of stocks to top up their accounts on these platforms.

And really they have about the same chance of hitting a 5-leg parlay as they do making money on a zero data expiry out of the money call option on orange juice futures.

So the number of people owning shares for the first time is misleading at best and outright dangerous at worst, but you are probably better than that. Right?

You might have a buy and hold portfolio that you make regular contributions to.

You don't have any high interest debt and you might even watch low energy boomers like Ben Felix or The Plain Bagel that give realistic guidance on how to invest your money. Surely you are an investor. Right? Wrong.

Statistically speaking, the only difference between you the average person watching this video and someone blowing up their Robinhood account is at least those guys have a little bit of self-awareness.