Keeping track: Americans stock up

Investors pumped a total of $163 billion into equity mutual funds from January to November of last year, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington. That's up $6 billion from the same period in 1998, when a global-currency crisis kept some mutual-fund investors at bay.

As of last November, a total of 3.7 trillion was invested in these funds.

Meanwhile, an estimated 48.4 million US households (47.4 percent of the total) owned mutual funds in 1999. That figure is up from only 4.6 million US households in 1980.

Compiled by Sara Steindorf

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