Global household wealth hit a record $570 trillion. Only a fifth of the increase was newly created.

Eight numbers from last week's Kobeissi Letter, lined up in a row. Apart they are separate stories. Side by side they point the same way. Global household net worth reached a record $570 trillion in 2025, up 7.3% in a year. Equities produced 57% of that increase, real estate just 15%.

The global balance sheet 2026: Imbalance and divergence (McKinsey Global Institute, 2026-07-23)

출처: mckinsey.com

The same report puts the entire global balance sheet near $1.8 quadrillion. Put simply, the world got richer last year not by making more things, but because the things it already owned were marked higher.

Who did that wealth land on

If equities made the wealth, it landed on whoever holds equities. The top 1% of US earners own 50.1% of US stocks and mutual funds, up from 40.1% in 1990. The bottom half of earners own 1.1%. Across investors as a whole the tilt is also at a record. Equities are 65% of the assets held by US households, pension funds, insurers and funds, eight percentage points above the dot-com peak.

Meanwhile the support underneath is thinning

The rest of the week's numbers run the other way. The US personal saving rate fell to 2.7% in June, the lowest since June 2022 and a fifth straight monthly decline. The 2014 to 2019 average was 5.5%. Assets grew while the share of income households keep halved. Borrowed money is shrinking too. Margin debt across Korea, China and Taiwan is down $67 billion from its June peak. Korean leveraged ETFs tied to SK Hynix and Samsung have lost 63% of their assets.

Korea's Leveraged Chip Trade Hits the Margin Call Wall (Investing.com, 2026-07-16)

출처: investing.com

That analysis reports margin calls on 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts by July 13, with 320,000 to 360,000 liquidated outright. The leverage came down closer to being forced out by falling prices than to investors changing their minds. Hedge funds moved the same way, selling global tech stocks over three days into July 28 at the fastest pace since records began in 2016.

Which way is the price of money going

The last two numbers are close to the answer. The market puts a record 60% probability on a quarter-point hike at the September FOMC. A hike, not a cut. Central banks bought a net 289 tonnes of gold in the second quarter, 62 tonnes more than a year earlier and the largest quarterly addition since Q4 2024.

Borrowing is being priced to get more expensive, and central banks are stacking the one asset that does not depend on a market marking it up.

So what settles this

The question comes down to one thing. Is last year's $570 trillion wealth that asset prices can keep producing, or wealth on paper that a single round trip in prices erases. The place to look is the saving rate and margin balances. If saving rises and margin debt rebuilds while prices are depressed, households absorbed the assets with their own money. If saving stays near 2% while margin debt keeps falling, both sources of support left at once. Wealth rising and money rising are not the same sentence. A fifth of last year's $570 trillion was newly created. The rest was price.