The number of millionaires in the world is pegged at 11 million, and a sizable majority of them live in the United States, followed by Japan and Germany, according to World Wealth Report 2012 published by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management. Think they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth? No, says a study by Fidelity Investments company, which has revealed interesting facts about the millionaires' path to wealth and their financial goals for the future.
According to the study, 86 percent of today's millionaires did not consider themselves wealthy growing up, or in other words, they were "self-made", while only 14 percent said they grew up wealthy.
The self-made millionaires considered investments/capital appreciation, compensation and employee stock options/profit sharing as their top sources of assets, and their investment strategy was to add equity investments.
Those born into wealth considered inheritance, entrepreneurship and real estate investment appreciation as their asset sources, and they had more real estate investments.
Domestic stocks are the number one choice of today's millionaires, followed by certificates of deposit/money market accounts/cash equivalents, equity exchange traded funds, individual domestic bonds and domestic equity mutual funds, says the study.
Another interesting finding of the study is that 35 percent of millionaires had a negative outlook on the current financial environment, 31 percent had a positive outlook and the remaining 34 percent had a neutral outlook.
Despite a lack of confidence in the current financial environment, those with a negative outlook still had a favorable outlook on future recovery. What's more, the millionaires' outlook on the future financial environment is at its highest level in the survey's history.
The findings are based on an in-depth analysis of the investing attitudes and behaviors of more than 1,000 millionaire households.
Commenting on the study findings, Michael Durbin, president, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services says, "One trend has held true throughout the life of this study - the millionaire investor's outlook has been consistently pragmatic about current market conditions and pervasively optimistic about a future recovery."
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