By institutional investors I’m guessing you mean pension plans and mutual funds. Which means a lot of average working people who have invested for their retirement.
It could mean that, or maybe the rich own most of those mutual funds too? Unfortunately the video links to a probably-AI-generated Medium article that references an article by The Atlantic that is from 2007 and about an unrelated topic and obviously isn’t the actual source for the 89% figure, so checking the actual numbers would require more work.
About two thirds of Americans have retirement money in the stock market. “Institutional investors” include retirement funds and mutual funds.
Source: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47699
That doesn’t really answer the question of whether the 89% figure is misleading due to regular investors having stake in institutional investors though, as suggested by the comment above mine. This would require information on the proportion of those funds owned by wealthy people vs non wealthy. That said you’re clearly giving better info than the OP video so kudos for that
Looking at the etymology of “equities” everything claims it comes from “aequitas,” the Latin word for “justice, equality, conformity, fairness,” but I find myself wondering if it’s also related to the “Equites” or “equestrian” class (the class just below the aristocratic “patrician” class, basically being defined as mechants/businesspeople wealthy enough to own horses). Frankly, it would fit just as well.
