Raphael Stevens

The top 10% of Americans added $5 trillion to their wealth in the second quarter as the stock market rally continued to benefit the biggest investors, according to new Federal Reserve data.
All wealth groups saw gains over the past year, with the net worth of the bottom half of Americans increasing 6% over the past 12 months, according to the Fed data.
The growth has been fastest for those at the very top.

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
The top 10% of Americans added $5 trillion to their wealth in the second quarter as the stock market rally continued to benefit the biggest investors, according to new data from the Federal Reserve.

The total wealth of the top 10% — or those with a net worth of more than $2 million — reached a record $113 trillion in the second quarter, up from $108 trillion in the first quarter, according to the Fed. The increase follows three years of continued growth for those at the top, with the top 10% adding over $40 trillion to their wealth since 2020.
All wealth groups saw gains over the past year, with the net worth of the bottom half of Americans increasing 6% over the past 12 months, according to the Fed data. Yet the growth has been fastest for those at the very top. The top 1% have seen their wealth increase by $4 trillion over the past year, an increase of 7%. Their wealth hit a record $52 trillion in the second quarter.
The top 0.1% saw their wealth grow by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the top 0.1%, or those with a net worth of at least $46 million, have seen their total wealth nearly double to over $23 trillion.
Despite the recent faster growth at the top, the total shares of wealth held by the upper echelon has remained fairly stable for decades. The top 1% held 29% of total household wealth in the second quarter, compared with 28% in 2000. The top 10% held 67% of total household wealth in the quarter while the bottom 90% held 33%.

Get Inside Wealth directly to your inbox

The biggest driver of wealth gains at the top this year has been the stock market. The value of the corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by the top 10% increased from $39 trillion to over $44 trillion over the past year. The top 10% of Americans hold over 87% of corporate equities and mutual fund shares.

The population of the ultra-wealthy is also growing rapidly. The number of ultra-high-net-worth Americans, or those worth $30 million or more, grew 6.5% in the first half of 2025, after surging 21% last year, according to a new report from Altrata. There are now 208,090 ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the U.S., accounting for 41% of the world’s total.
The surging wealth at the top has created an increasingly bifurcated consumer economy, with the wealthy accounting for a growing share of overall spending. Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of consumer spending in the second quarter, marking the highest level since data started being compiled in 1989, according to Mark Zandi at Moody’s Analytics.
The so-called “K-shaped economy” has performed well so far, at least according to broad economic measures such as GDP and consumption. Yet the growing dependence on a small sliver of consumers at the top carries risks.
Zandi said a deep and prolonged decline in the stock market, which is driving almost all of the wealth gains at the top, could send wider ripples through the economy.
“The economy is being powered in big part by the spending of the extraordinarily well-to-do, who are cheered by the surging value of their stock portfolios,” he said. “If the richly (over) valued stock market were to stumble, for whatever reason, and the well-to-do see more red on their stock tickers than green, they will quickly turn more cautious in their spending, posing a serious threat to the already fragile economy.” More

Higher interest rates, a capital market retraction and a push by almost all venture capital into AI collectively hit property technology hard.
“You saw a lot of companies and new businesses and venture funds die. We just lived through an extinction event,” said Brendan Wallace, co-founder and CEO of venture capital firm Fifth Wall.
Climate tech, specifically, is becoming increasingly challenged due to the political winds in the U.S. that have shifted dramatically away from sustainability and climate resilience.

Fifth Wall co-founder and CEO Brendan Wallace.
Courtesy of Fifth Wall

A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
As with much of the real estate industry, property technology, generally defined as the use of tech and software to make real estate and property management more efficient, took a big hit in recent years. 

Higher interest rates, a capital market retraction and a push by almost all venture capital into artificial intelligence collectively hit property tech hard. While there is, of course, some AI in property tech, it hasn’t been enough to really drive interest in a sector that has historically been extremely slow to modernize. 
“I’d say we just lived through probably the most challenging three years that certainly I’ve ever experienced,” said Brendan Wallace, co-founder and CEO of Fifth Wall. “You saw a lot of companies and new businesses and venture funds die. We just lived through an extinction event.”
Fifth Wall is a venture capital fund managing over $3 billion in capital, the largest investment firm focused on technology for the built environment.

Get Property Play directly to your inbox

CNBC’s Property Play with Diana Olick covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, delivered weekly to your inbox.
Subscribe here to get access today.

Wallace said the winter is over for property tech, citing last year’s IPO of ServiceTitan, a cloud-based field service management software for trades such as HVAC, plumbing, electrical and landscaping. The company raised about $625 million in its initial public offering, and shares jumped 42% in their Nasdaq debut. 
Wallace also noted new unicorns, such as Juniper Square and Bilt, which bode well for the future of property tech investing. Bilt, a platform offering loyalty rewards for housing, raised $250 million in July at a $10.75 billion valuation in a funding round led by General Catalyst and GID, including a strategic investment from United Wholesale Mortgage.  

“The amount of enterprise value destruction that happened to prop tech was unprecedented from 2022 to 2024, but the amount of enterprise value creation that has just happened in the last 15 months has also been unprecedented,” Wallace said.
That is not the case, however, in climate-related property tech. That space is becoming increasingly challenged due to the political winds in the U.S. that have shifted dramatically away from sustainability and climate resilience, not to mention climate science overall. As a result, the entire climate tech ecosystem in real estate is suffering. 
Again, real estate has always been slow to modernize and was particularly slow to decarbonize. It got a huge boost, however, from President Joe Biden’s administration and billions of dollars in public funding, much of which went to decarbonizing real estate overall. Then, Wallace said, the world shifted under its feet.
“Many climate funds are struggling to raise. Many real estate owners are deprioritizing sustainability, decarbonization and ESG [environmental, social and governance], and there is a palpable, negative sentiment shift that has set on climate-related prop tech,” Wallace explained. “And so what that means is we’re still supporting our companies. We’re actually still seeing lots of good progress, but the sentiment is negative.”
Despite the shift, he said he is optimistic about the sector for one powerful reason: While national policy may be anti-climate, local governments are not. Cities are running out of money, and carbon taxes are a very attractive way of raising capital. New York City is a prime example. It is not only moving much further left in its politics, but it has consistently been more environmentally progressive. 
Fifth Wall, one of the biggest investors in this space, is taking the long-term play, investing while the negative “halo” around climate persists because valuations are attractive.
“My view is the real estate industry is still responsible for 40% of carbon emissions. It’s still this industry that has shirked its responsibility for years, and it’s going to cost a lot to decarbonize. It’s a lot of money, and capital is going to flow into that space … which is one of the reasons why we’re still deploying capital, because we’re the only ones,” Wallace said. More

Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” will launch Friday with at least seven collectible vinyl variants that are expected to drive sales.
Vinyl records, CDs and cassettes escape U.S. tariffs thanks to a Cold War-era exemption, keeping prices stable for fans but frustrating U.S. manufacturers, who argue tariffs could strengthen domestic production.
Physical music’s resurgence has been driven largely by Gen Z collectors and social media “vinyl hauls,” turning vinyl into one of the music industry’s fastest-growing segments.

Taylor Swift performs onstage during The Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium on June 21, 2024, in London.
Kevin Mazur | Getty Images

On Friday, 24-year-old Tayra McDaniels will scamper down the stairs of her East Village apartment building and pick up four preordered vinyl editions of Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl” — each a different color and with a different collectible cover. Then she’ll head over to Target to snag three more exclusive CDs and another vinyl, she said.
The haul will cost her more than $200. “I know it’s a lot of money,” she said. “But I don’t want to miss out.”

One point of reprieve in the price: McDaniels and other vinyl fans won’t have to worry about tariffs on their hauls.
Vinyl records, CDs and cassettes were spared from the Trump administration’s late-August rollback of the “de minimis” exemption. The exemption, which had allowed packages valued at less than $800 to be imported without tariffs, was designed to simplify customs for low-cost imports and reduce fees for both consumers and small retailers. Trump’s rollback of the exemption allowed tariffs to take effect on such shipments — but not on physical music.
A Cold War-era carveout known as the Berman Amendment to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act prevents presidents from regulating the flow of “informational materials,” a category that includes physical music, books and artwork.
“If vinyl had gotten tariffed, you could have possibly seen the price of a record going up to $40 and $50,” Berklee College of Music professor Ralph Jaccodine told CNBC. “So, this is welcome news for people buying physical music.”
The exemption, which is protecting one of the fastest-growing segments of the music industry, is also welcome on Wall Street.

Vinyl sales have roared back in the past decade, particularly during the pandemic, driven by younger buyers and an appetite for nostalgia. The PVC discs now account for nearly three-quarters of all U.S. physical music revenue — a nearly 20% jump since 2020, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America.
“It is very encouraging and a bit of a relief that physical music formats have been classified as exempt to tariffs,” said Ryan Mitrovich, general manager of the Vinyl Alliance, a nonprofit promoting physical media that works with manufacturers, distributors and music labels. “However, we’re not really taking anything for granted here with the chaotic climate around trade disruptions.”

The sales boom has been lucrative for record labels such as Universal Music Group, or UMG, which works with Swift.
Her last album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” sold 3.49 million physical and digital copies, according to entertainment data company Luminate, driving a 9.6% jump in UMG’s second-quarter revenue in 2024 compared with the same period in 2023. Physical revenue, which includes vinyl, surged by 14.4% during the quarter.
Without a Swift album on shelves so far this year, UMG’s most recent earnings report, in July, showed a 4.5% uptick in revenue year over year, but physical revenue decreased by 12.4%. UMG shares fell 24% after the July earnings release.
Universal Music Group declined to comment.
The downturn could be short-lived. Estimates from Billboard predict that first-week vinyl sales of Swift’s new 12-track album, which debuts Friday, could top 1 million — breaking her own record of 859,000 for “The Tortured Poets Department.”
“Taylor Swift has unique ability to drive the market through her decisions of what and how to release music,” said Jaccodine, who has worked with artists such as Bruce Springsteen. “Swift’s release can and will likely cause a boom in the music business.”

Arrows pointing outwards

Source: TaylorSwift.com

Tariff trade-offs

Not everyone is celebrating the tariff exemptions. Some American record manufacturers say they’re missing out on business.
“We support the tariffs because it helps U.S. manufacturing, and we want to be a part of the wave of making things in the USA,” Alex Cushing, co-founder and president of Dallas-based Hand Drawn Records, told CNBC.
Most vinyl is pressed overseas, industry experts said, with the largest manufacturer, GZ Media, based in the Czech Republic. GZ CEO Michal Štěrba said the company has made top-selling albums for artists such as Lady Gaga, Madonna and U2. On average, the company produces 1 in 4 records from plants around the globe, including ones in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, he added.
“Our goal is to keep production as close to the customer as possible, so that a record sold in the U.S. is also made in the U.S.,” Štěrba told CNBC.
If tariffs were imposed, Štěrba said, costs would get passed on to consumers.
“By keeping tariff costs out of the supply chain — regardless of the product or country — consumers benefit through better pricing,” Štěrba said in a statement. “Ultimately, it’s usually the customer who has to pay a higher price if tariffs are applied.”
Cushing, a board member of the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association, said he believes there would be more American jobs if tariffs were to apply to vinyl.
“We could put more hard-working Americans to work with good wages,” he said. “Our company makes 2 million records annually with a staff of just 60. If you want to grow manufacturing jobs, this would be a great industry.”
Cushing said U.S. manufacturers like his don’t have the capacity to handle the demand for an album on Swift’s scale. But for smaller-scale artists, he said, tariffs on imports could shift more business stateside.
“Our raw materials are tariffed, but with skyrocketing shipping and material costs globally, regional shipping in the U.S., coupled with having lower inventory, could help lower costs,” Cushing said.
Some American manufacturers preempted extra costs earlier this year.
“Tariffs were definitely forecasted, and the industry was preparing for this for quite a while,” Vinyl Alliance’s Mitrovich said. “We saw a lot of companies defend against this by increasing their stocks of ink, PVC and other things in the months leading up to the tariffs.”

A man browses through vinyl records.
SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

Artists’ earnings

For many artists, physical sales remain more lucrative than streaming.
On Spotify, earnings usually range between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream based on an artist’s contract with their record label, Jaccodine said. Meanwhile, artists typically enjoy between 10% and 25% of royalties on physical records, according to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
“Unless you are just a handful of musicians, you basically are not making enough money from streaming to sustain,” Jaccodine said. “For artists large and small, merchandise like records, CDs, cassettes, hats, hoodies and ticket sales are the bread and butter.”
For comparison, Swift’s Eras Tour, which was the highest-grossing tour of all time, sold over $2 billion worth of tickets for 149 shows over two years, The New York Times reported. Meanwhile, she earned between $200 million and $400 million from streaming platforms over that same period, according to figures from Billboard.

A display showing copies of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour Book” at a Target store in Alexandria, Virginia, Nov. 29, 2024.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters

Gen Z’s buying power

Analysts expect the vinyl market to keep expanding, though not at the explosive pace seen during the pandemic.
“The market for vinyl is strong and is likely to be for the foreseeable future, but there could always be supply troubles,” Jaccodine said.
Gen Z has fueled vinyl’s resurgence, industry experts said. Nearly 60% of 18- to 24-year-olds in a survey by music manufacturer Key Production said they listen to physical music, the highest of any demographic group. The survey was conducted Feb. 27-March 5, 2024, in the U.K., and had 503 respondents.
The vinyl comeback also kicked off an explosion in the number of “variants” released: collectible editions of albums or singles with alternative cover art, colored discs or vinyl-exclusive bonus tracks.
On TikTok, “vinyl hauls” rack up millions of views as fans show off rare variants and collections, sparking demand and motivating fans such as McDaniels to buy.
“It’s sort of like Pokémon where you ‘gotta catch ’em all,'” McDaniels said. “There’s FOMO [fear of missing out] if someone has a variant that you don’t.”
Experts said Gen Z’s interest in vinyl is also a response to digital burnout.
“So many groups are on their screens paying fees to have access to content but do not ever actually own anything, so this gives them physical ownership,” Cushing said. “Vinyl is counter to all the ease of modern music listening and that’s why people want it.”
No artist has capitalized on the trend more than Swift.
“The Tortured Poets Department” was 2024’s top album, accounting for over 6% of total album sales — more than seven times the next-best-selling artist, according to Luminate. Swift released 36 different album variants in the U.S. across digital and physical music.  
“The Life of a Showgirl” comes in at least seven different variants of colored vinyl, each with a unique cover. For Swift and UMG, every exclusive edition of a vinyl record, CD or cassette has the potential to generate millions in extra revenue.
“Sales of Swift’s albums act as drivers for the fortunes of almost the entire music industry,” Jaccodine said. “Her fans are waiting with bated breath for the release, but so is the industry.”
For McDaniels and thousands of other superfans, the lingering question is how easy it will be to get the exclusive variants first.
“I know people think it’s crazy,” she said. “As long as a vinyl stays under $75 for a new release, I feel like it is worth it. It’s like an addiction to getting these, but I love collecting them.” More

Elon Musk this week urged his followers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions over a controversy surrounding an animated show and its creator.
Shares of the company are down 4% this week.
Analysts say the statements might not have as big an impact on the stock as Musk is intending.

Elon Musk stands in the Oval Office to attend a press event with U.S. President Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 30, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters

Elon Musk this week urged his followers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions over a controversy surrounding an animated show and its creator.
Musk on Wednesday posted on his X platform saying, “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.” The post was in response to an image accusing Netflix of carrying out a “transgender woke agenda.”

The controversy seems to stem from conservative backlash over an animated Netflix show, “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” which features a transgender character. The show was canceled in 2023 after two seasons.
In addition to several anti-trans posts, Musk also responded to a post criticizing alleged statements made by the show’s creator, Hamish Steele, that a prominent conservative X account said “mocked” the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Steele responded to Musk’s callout on rival social media platform Bluesky saying, “It’s probably going to be a very odd day.” Steele also shared a post by TV writer Jack Bernhardt that called “Dead End” a “brilliant show about kind, wonderful characters.”
Netflix did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Analysts say the backlash might not pose as big of a threat to Netflix as Musk may be hoping for.

Netflix reported 301.63 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2024, the last time it reported the metric before shifting priority to revenue over user growth. The company has a roughly $490 billion market cap, and its stock is up more than 60% in the past year.
Shares are down 4% so far this week.
“Is that going to move the needle necessarily? … You’re going to see people sign up on the back of that to counter it,” CNBC contributor Guy Adami said Wednesday on “Fast Money.”
“I don’t think this is a reason to sell the stock,” he added.
Wedbush Securities’ Alicia Reese told CNBC that the comments came too late in the third quarter to make any meaningful impact on subscriber counts.
Still, she said she believes the backlash won’t make a major dent and that any impact will be offset by an increase in ad revenue.
“Their numbers should come out just fine,” Reese said. “I think that shares haven’t been hit too hard.”
Seymour Asset Management’s Tim Seymour said though a day of headlines may move the stock around, Netflix shares are ultimately too expensive to be significantly affected by internet backlash.
“We’ve had these moments in time where, whether it was an ad campaign that went wrong or whether it was some sense that a company was aligned in a particular political channel… I don’t think that that’s going to be the reason to sell Netflix here,” Seymour said Wednesday.
The calls for a boycott mirror those against Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2023 after it released an ad campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. But the boycott of Bud Light, CNBC contributor Karen Finerman noted on Wednesday, yielded “far greater” destruction than any other recent examples.
“I feel like this will be very fleeting,” Finerman said. More

Baby boomers make up nearly half of the 510,000 people who are worth at least $30 million, according to a new report by Altrata.
But by 2040, millennials and members of Generation Z are expected make up a third of the world’s ultra-wealthy.
The world’s wealthy are shifting thanks to tech wealth, social media and earlier inheritances.

Young cheerful lady enjoying on poolside. Resting in spa hotel in pine forest in summertime. Swimming pool in tourist resort. Joyful woman on vacations, female wellbeing.
Oleg Breslavtsev | Moment | Getty Images

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
The ranks of the world’s ultra-wealthy continue to swell, with the number of individuals worth at least $30 million surging to 510,810 at the end of June, up 5.4% since the beginning of the year, according to a new report by wealth intelligence firm Altrata.

Millennials and members of Generation Z only make up 8% of this class, which boasts combined net worth of $59.8 trillion, per Altrata. Baby boomers command the lion’s share of nearly 45% and people born in 1945 or earlier represent another 22%.
However, this dynamic is set to change rapidly thanks to the great wealth transfer, with Altrata estimating that the millennials and Gen Z constituents will make up more than a third of the ultra-wealthy population by 2040. Meanwhile, the share held by baby boomers and the silent generation will shrink from more than two-thirds to a fifth, and Generation X will take the lead with 45%.
This generational shift has far-reaching implications for firms that cater to the ultra-rich, from wealth managers to art dealers as well as nonprofits, according to Altrata’s Maya Imberg.
“They really have to think ahead because 15 years is not actually that far away,” said Imberg, head of thought leadership and analytics at Altrata. “Are environmentally friendly cars going to become more critical? Are they going to be as into yachting? All of these preferences are going to have a really big impact on the bottom line of businesses.”

Part of this rapid growth is due to the increased use of trusts and family offices over the past decade to pass wealth to heirs at an earlier age, Altrata’s Maeen Shaban told Inside Wealth.

“That means younger people are able to access that wealth. They don’t have to wait for the principal to pass away,” said the director of research and analytics.
Imberg said the most “stark” difference between generations lies in the industries where they made their wealth and the ones where they currently work. For most ultra-wealthy individuals, especially younger ones, these two are one and the same, according to Imberg.
But 15% of the next generation derives their wealth from hospitality and entertainment, while their older peers index below 5%. The next generation is also the most likely (just under 9%) to have technology as their industry of focus, which is twice the share of baby boomers. While banking and finance is the most popular industry across all generations, the share for the youngest is just under 20%, 10 percentage points lower than the average.
These differences, according to the report, reflect tech companies minting millionaires, as well as influencers and celebrities monetizing social media.

Get Inside Wealth directly to your inbox

Other nuances can largely be attributed to age, such as the next generation listing philanthropy as a lower priority, as well as real estate and luxury assets making up nearly a quarter of their wealth. These young entrepreneurs are typically running businesses that may be illiquid, leaving less time and cash to spend on philanthropy, Imberg said.
They also have a lower average wealth with a median of $44 million (versus $57 million for baby boomers), so real estate often makes up a larger chunk of their portfolios, according to Shaban. And while baby boomers are downsizing, the next generation is in the mood to spend, he said.
“They are in more of an acquisition state than older generations. They’re still buying things. For some of them, they’re buying the first house, their first big car, their first vacation home, or whatever,” he said. “It’s a different life cycle.” More