96% of US Stocks Failed to Create Wealth Over a Century, Study Finds

Almost all US shares failed to construct lasting wealth over the previous century, a new Arizona State University examine discovered, after monitoring 29,754 corporations from 1926 via 2025.

Just 1,082 of these companies, about 3.7%, created all of the market’s web features. Every different inventory, on common, did no higher than proudly owning Treasury payments. Those payments are short-term authorities loans, among the many most secure locations to park money.

Most US Stocks Trailed Treasury Bills

The paper, “One Hundred Years within the U.S. Stock Markets,” makes use of the University of Chicago’s CRSP database. It covers each inventory listed on the New York and American exchanges and Nasdaq since 1926.

Its writer, finance professor Hendrik Bessembinder, up to date his landmark 2018 examine on the identical query. That earlier work first confirmed how few shares drive all the market.

The century of information exhibits practically 60% of shares left buyers worse off than these protected Treasury payments. Only about 41% managed to beat them.

The averages are deceptive. The center, or median, inventory misplaced 6.9% over its life. The total common topped 30,000%, lifted by a handful of large winners.

The similar imbalance seems at present, with features pushed by fewer and fewer corporations, a sample analysts name narrow market breadth.

A Few Giants Created the Gains

Five corporations created greater than one-fifth of all inventory market wealth since 1926. Apple leads at $5.02 trillion, about 5.5% of the entire. Nvidia follows at $4.58 trillion.

Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon spherical out the highest 5. All belong to the Magnificent Seven, the small group of Big Tech shares that now dominates the market. Those seven created 24.2% of the century’s wealth, fueling Big Tech bubble warnings in 2026.

Timing exhibits how briskly this occurred. Nvidia solely went public in 1999, but it and Apple now maintain about 10% of all wealth ever created. The development helps clarify why semiconductor stocks outperformed Big Tech and crypto this yr.

“People preserve saying the S&P is being carried by a handful of AI shares, as if that is one thing new. It shouldn’t be. The market has at all times run on a tiny quantity of winners. What modified is how few of them there at the moment are,” analyst Bull Theory remarked.

Even the market’s smallest Nvidia supplier stocks have joined the rally.

Market Concentration Is Accelerating

The focus is tightening quick. Using information via 2016, the 2018 examine discovered 89 companies made up half of all web wealth.

Nine years later, simply 46 companies make up half. Over the identical span, complete wealth ballooned to $91 trillion from $43 trillion. The winners’ circle shrank because the prize doubled.

Those 9 years line up virtually precisely with the rise of Big Tech and the AI growth. That overlap raises the stakes of any looming stock selloff out there’s few leaders.

Bessembinder’s message has held for 3 a long time. A couple of shares carry the entire market, which he says favors broad index funds over choosing particular person winners.

The working paper has not but been peer reviewed.

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