Through a collaboration between Commonwealth, The BlackRock Foundation, and the JPMorganChase Institute (JPMCI), billions of transactions and more than 25 million checking accounts were analyzed to learn more about how and why people choose to invest, giving a further macro-view into the pattern of today’s retail investors living on low-to-moderate income (LMI). 

These findings add transaction-level insight into the financial behaviors and conditions that influence sustained participation among investors living on low and moderate incomes, and reinforce patterns identified in our National Survey. We found that investors living on low and moderate incomes are:

• Entering the capital markets and growing at increasing rates since 2020
• Increasing in numbers across every income group
• Committing a greater share of their income to investing
• More likely to continue to invest with even a modest cushion of liquid savings
• More likely to make investment deposits during seasonal or short-term income increases