More Americans hold stocks, for better or for worse

NEW YORK (AP) — A plunge in stock prices always stings, but this recent one dug deeper because more Americans are participating in the market, particularly older ones.
Slightly more than half of all U.S. families own stocks in some way, from workers who got automatically enrolled into their 401(k) retirement accounts to day-traders working their personal accounts. The rate of stock ownership is the highest since the dawn of the Great Recession in 2007.
On the whole, higher stock ownership