American households are pretty damn near fully invested at this point. They chose to really ramp up exposure after the big gains were made – but of course we know that’s how it will always be.

Here’s BlackRock’s chief strategist Russ Koesterich at ETFdb:

According to the Fed’s data, the share of household financial assets devoted to cash and highly-rated government bonds has been drifting lower since the end of the financial crisis and has actually fallen below the long-run average.

Meanwhile, the same Fed data also show that investors have steadily moved into ever riskier investments, especially during the recent equity bull market. Americans now hold the largest percentage of their financial assets in stocks, corporate bonds and mutual funds – a loose proxy for exposure to riskier investments – since the third quarter of 2000, near the height of the tech bubble. The percentage of investors’ financial assets in such riskier investments is now 34.9%, just shy of the highest exposure to risky assets since the 1950s – 38.4% in the first quarter of 2000.

It only took 180% gains in US stocks and massive corporate bond market total returns. Now – NOW – everyone wants to come to their senses and do productive things with their savings.

Goodie gumdrops.

Now let’s hope they kept at least a few of these dollars out of the tech / biotech bubble upon allocating.

Source:

“Cautious” Investors: Saying One Thing, Doing Another (ETFdb)