The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that influence household stock investment choices. Using the cross-sectional surveys of the Survey of Consumer Finance in the period 1992-2019 two type of empirical models were studied. In the first analysis, with probit models, the characteristics associated with the choice to own shares were analysed; subsequently, conditional on the shareholding, regression models were used to estimate the fraction of financial asset invested in shares. The data show that an important, albeit decreasing, portion of households do not invest in equities, through the probit model developed it is possible to estimate with an acceptable degree of accuracy whether the household has made the decision to enter the equity markets.