Why Brokerage Accounts Are Excluded from Net Worth Studies
Most federal and academic net worth studies exclude brokerage accounts because they focus on household balance sheet assets like real estate, bank deposits, and retirement accounts. The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances, the most recent release covering 2022 data, reports median and mean net worth using categories such as defined-benefit and defined-contribution retirement plans, bank accounts, and directly held securities, but brokerage account balances are not always broken out as a distinct line item in headline net worth tables. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis note that brokerage holdings are often aggregated with other financial assets, making it difficult to isolate their contribution to total net worth in published studies Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances.
Because brokerage accounts hold marketable securities such as stocks, bonds, and exchange-traded funds, their values fluctuate daily, which complicates static net worth snapshots. Studies that report net worth at a single point in time may exclude brokerage positions to reduce volatility and focus on more stable assets like home equity and retirement savings. This design choice means that households with large brokerage portfolios may appear less wealthy in published tables than they are in practice, especially when those portfolios contain concentrated positions in individual stocks or private equity funds.
How Exclusion Affects Wealth Rankings and Financial Research
Impact on Wealth Distribution Analysis
Wealth concentration analyses from organizations such as the Economic Policy Institute and the Federal Reserve rely on net worth data that often understates the financial assets held in brokerage accounts. When brokerage balances are omitted or merged into broader categories, the top percentile of households may appear less concentrated in liquid financial assets than they actually are. This affects policy discussions about inequality, capital gains taxation, and the role of brokerage platforms such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard in household wealth accumulation Forbes Advisor Brokerage Account Guide.
Academic researchers studying wealth inequality use datasets such as the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, where brokerage account inclusion varies by survey design. Some studies treat brokerage assets as part of financial wealth but exclude them from net worth calculations that focus on total assets minus debt, leading to inconsistent comparisons across papers. This methodological variation makes it difficult to benchmark the true share of brokerage wealth in the overall distribution of household assets.
Which Data Sources and Companies Report Brokerage Holdings Separately
Brokerage Firms and Public Filings
Major brokerage firms report account statistics in their quarterly and annual filings, providing data on assets under custody and assets under management that are not captured in traditional net worth studies. Charles Schwab reported total client assets under custody exceeding 7 trillion dollars in its 2023 annual report, while Fidelity Investments and Vanguard reported similar growth in brokerage and investment accounts SEC EDGAR Company Filings. These figures highlight the scale of brokerage wealth that remains outside the standard net worth metrics used in federal surveys and academic research.
Regulatory filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority require broker-dealers to disclose certain account and asset statistics, but these are not integrated into household net worth datasets. As a result, researchers and journalists often rely on company press releases and annual reports to estimate the size of brokerage wealth, noting that the exclusion of brokerage accounts from net worth studies creates a gap between reported household balance sheets and the actual financial asset holdings of American families Vanguard.