US household wealth eked out record high in fourth quarter on stock gains

U.S. household wealth eked out a fresh record high at the end of 2024, Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday, thanks to a stock market rally that appears to have run out of steam in the past three weeks.

The net worth of households and non-profit groups rose about $200 billion to $169.4 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, the U.S. central bank said in its quarterly U.S. financial accounts report, as a drop in the value of real estate trimmed gains from equities.

Stock market holdings, the biggest component of household net worth, rose about $300 billion to $56 trillion in value, while household real estate, the second-biggest component, fell about $400 billion to $48.1 trillion.

The S&P 1500 Composite index, which encompasses the vast majority of the U.S. stock market, gained 2.1% in the fourth quarter of 2024. It has lost nearly $4 trillion in value since President Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration and about $2.7 trillion since this year began.

The report offers a snapshot of the broad financial health of U.S. families, businesses and the public sector at the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration. During the final full quarter of 2025, household debt grew at a 3.1% annual pace, in line with previous quarters, while non-financial sector business debt rose just 1%, the slowest pace in a year.

Federal government debt, which Trump hopes to reduce in part by slashing government payrolls and spending, expanded at a pace of 8.4%, while state and local government debt shrank 1.4%.

Tens of thousands of JPMorgan Chase software engineers increased their efficiency, delivering products 10% to 20% faster by using a coding assistant tool developed by the bank, its global chief information officer Lori Beer said.

The gains present “a great opportunity” for the lender to assign its engineers to other projects, Beer told Reuters ahead of DevUp, an internal conference hosted by JPMorgan, bringing together its top engineers in India.

The largest lender in the U.S. had a technology budget of $17 billion for 2024.

Its tech workforce of 63,000 employees, with a third of them based in India, represents about 21% of its global headcount.

The efficiency gains from the coding assistant will also allow JPMorgan’s Indian centers to devote more time to high-value projects focusing on artificial intelligence and data, she said.

The bank already has about 450 potential cases for which it could use AI, and CEO Jamie Dimon expects those potential applications to surge to 1,000 by next year. The bank is focused on areas where it can use AI to make money for its businesses, Beer said.

“I wouldn’t say success is if we get 1,000 done,” she said. “Success is if we continue to articulate that it’s not just an incremental shift with AI, but we’re transforming and creating value,” she said.

JPMorgan’s president Daniel Pinto previously said implementing AI could add about $1 billion to $1.5 billion in value for the bank.

“If I don’t pass those bars of true outcomes, doesn’t matter how many use cases I enabled in production,” Beer said.

In terms of hiring, “we’ve sort of passed our high growth time,” Beer said.

“There’s so much productivity and opportunity as we think about a world with AI. We’ve grown rapidly…You’re going to see us continue to optimize the footprint we have,” she said.