Global Stock Market

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Last Updated: Sunday, 04 August 2024 14:33
Published: Saturday, 04 December 2021 05:14
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Global stocks:

There are millions of businesses around the world. Most of them are private, meaning it's owned by an individual like us, and the profit/loss is kept  by the individual owner of the business. Such business or companies are called "private". On the other hand, we have some business whose owners decide to take the company public, meaning they allow other people to become part owners of their company. The business owner issues shares of the company, and depending on what % of shares an individual has, that decides the ownership of the company for that person. Such companies are called "public" companies. The term "public" is misleading, since public companies usually implies government companies (i.e public service meaning services provided by government). But here "public" companies mean companies those are listed on stock exchanges.

Stock Exchanges:

There are stock exchanges where buying/selling of stocks happen. A company can list their stock on any exchange, meaning they allow buying/selling of their stocks on that trading exchange. A company can list their stocks on multiple exchanges also, so that there can be more trading. Usually big companies list their stocks in big stock exchanges, so that they can get better price or more visibility/liquidity in their stock. Also, it's considered a prestige symbol for a company to be listed in a big renowned stock exchange.

These are biggest stock exchanges of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges

Stock Market index:

These exchanges also develop an index to track the performance of the companies trading on their exchange. There are lot of stock market index (not only the ones created by the exchanges, but also ones that are created by other companies or individuals). A stock market index is a index of a group of companies, weighted according to preference of that index creator.

For ex, if I wanted to make a index called "hot index", I can include maybe 5 hottest stocks as Tesla, Paypal, Netflix, Nvidia and Apple in the index. Now I assign may be 30% weightage to Apple, 20% each to Tesla and Nvidia and 15% each to Paypal and Netflix. If the price of each of these stocks is $100, then the resulting price of the index for 1 "unit" of index can be chosen to be anything, but that will contain stocks in that proportion. Let's say 1 "unit" of this index is chosen to be $100, then there will $30 worth of apple stock, $20 worth of Tesla, $20 worth of Nvidia, $15 worth of paypal and $15 worth of netflix.

Just because there is a index someone created, doesn't mean that index is traded. Someone will need to create a fund or a security which mimics that index. Then he will need to go to an exchange and ask them to list his "security" over there. Then he can start selling it to people on the stock exchange. If there is enough interest in that index, then people may start buying that security, which mimics that index. For providing this service, the person who is providing this fund, may charge an "expense ratio" which is a percentage of  fees that he/she charges every year from that "fund" itself. So, if a fund charges 1% expense ratio, that means $1 will be automatically deducted from that fund every year (assuming fund's avg market value is $100 for that year), w/o anyone doing anything. This expense ratio is separate from the "transaction fees" that you incur on selling/buying this fund. Transaction fees are levied by the brokerage firm who are providing you the service of buying/selling. Expense ratio is levied by the fund itself.

Usually indexes have weight assigned according to the market cap of the company (i.e a bigger company has a higher weight in index than a smaller company). This works well in practice, since larger companies are not only less volatile, but also more likely to survive in distressed scenarios. If we give every company a equal weight, then the index may become very volatile, and also it doesn't seem fair to give a very small company with $100M revenue the same weight age as a company with $100B in revenue. If the smaller company grows by 10X, then total revenue of 2 companies will only go up by 1%. It makes sense that index should go up by 1% or so, not by 50%, when the total sales of both the companies combined has gone up by only 1%. That's why most indices of world weigh individual companies in the index based on market cap.

Is there an Ideal Index?

What we are doing with all these index funds is trying to find a subset of stocks that will beat the market (i.e basket containing all stocks such as Wilshire 5000 is the market). It's a difficult problem to find an index that will always beat the market in future. People keep on looking at past data and come up with list of companies that have generated the best return, and form an index based on that. But there is no guarantee that such an index will also generate the best return in future. In fact, chances are higher that such an index will generate lower returns in future, since the stocks in such indices have already run their course, and are more likely to under perform the market. So, unless an index can time the market of dropping companies and adding companies at the precise time, they will always just perform at market in long runs. They may over perform the market for some period of time, but then they will underperform for a while, resulting in an avg performance, which is same as that of market.

One other thing that seems intuitive in making an ideal index is to just make an index of 50 largest companies in country, let's say USA. As we'll see later, these 50 largest companies comprise about half of total market cap of USA. So, it's diversified enough. Also, any small cap company that starts growing and become big enough to be in top 50, will be picked up by this index, and will start reaping the benefits of extra returns that these new companies provide. One risk here is that by limiting ourselves to top 50 companies, we miss out on big run up of small companies. Let's say a small company like Tesla which goes public at $1B valuation won't get included in this index until it gets to $100B valuation. So, we miss out on the 100X return that this stock provided (going from $1B to $100B). After Tesla gets included in index when it gets to $100B, we may not get 100X return on this stock anymore. So, a better approach might be to expand the number of companies allowed in our ideal index to have may be 100-200 companies. That way we'll pick up these small companies in our index when they get to may be $50B or more. Or may be we might want to have 400-500 companies so that we pick up these companies when they get to $10B valuation. That way, we'll be able to get most of the return of these small companies. This is precisely what S&P500 is. So, our ideal index started turning into S&P500 index, and we keep on expanding it further, it becomes W5000. If we make our index comprise too many small companies, then the risk is that we may lower our return since majority of these small companies will go bankrupt. But again, since their contribution is so small, it may not affect our index negatively in any big way, but may help our index in big positive way (especially if even 1 of these companies goes 100X in valuation). So, there's an ideal number where you can stop to maximize your index return (Look at historical data for last 20 years, and solve it as a Machine learning line fit problem). But truth be told, you can NEVER beat the market return in any statistically significant way over a long period of time by picking stocks !!

So, the answer, there's no Ideal Index for a long period of time :(

Market Cap by countries:

All the stocks trade on one of the above stock exchanges. There are about 50,000 public companies listed on one or multiple of these stock exchanges. This link shows how global market cap changed over the last 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_stock_market_capitalization

What is the global market cap of all companies in the world?

Global market cap was $1T in 1975 with only 15K companies. It went to $30T in 2000, and was $125T as of 2021 with about 50K companies. From 25% of world GDP in 1975 (GDP=$5T, Market cap=$1.2T) the total stock market cap went to over 135% of GDP in 2021 (GDP=$96T, Market cap=$125T). Below we'll see the market cap of companies from each country, as well as market cap of companies listed on the stock exchanges of these countries. From above link, we do see that the total market cap of all listed companies in just the top 20 countries is about $100T (as of 2020). So, pretty reasonable to guess that total market cap would be about $110T in 2020 (assuming 90% of market cap is captured by top 20 countries). For 2021, stock markets went up by further 15%-20%, so total market cap for all companies worldwide would be at least $125T at the end of 2021.

NOTE: There is lot of disparity online on what is the market cap of all companies worldwide. We can't figure out market cap, by just adding market cap of all listed securities on all the exchanges of the world, as many exchanges allow foreign companies to be listed too, which may result in double counting of these companies when adding up the global market cap. The wikipedia link above seems to be most authentic as it only shows domestic companies listed for each country. However, looking at wiki link above, the total market cap of all companies from top table is way over $100T, while bottom table lists total market cap as $96T for 2020. $96T is definitely incorrect, and should be somewhere around $110T (I haven't added it up yet).

Major Stock exchanges and their index:

Below are the largest stock exchanges for each country as per the market cap of all the companies trading on that stock exchange, as well as some of the popular index created by those exchanges. Market cap includes not only equities, but also bonds, commodities, foreign exchange, or any other things that are traded on that stock exchange (many times there are dedicated stock exchanges for trading commodities, futures, etc. i.e London Metal Exchange for trading options on metals). We will have to subtract out other market caps from below market cap to get "equity" only market cap, but that's hard to do. So, we'll just live with below market cap reported, assuming 70%-80% of that is due to "equity" market cap. USA has the largest equity market cap at $40T-$50T, with China and Europe coming in at $15T each.

USA: Total Market cap of domestic companies = $40T (as of Dec 2023)

Stocks listed on US exchanges have total market cap of $40T as of 2020, implying 40% of the world's market cap is due to US domestic companies. USA has 2 stock exchanges, NYSE and Nasdaq. These are also the 2 biggest stock exchange of world, where you can almost find any well capitalized stock to trade. It's considered a symbol of pride for a company to be listed on any of these 2 stock exchanges. There are about 5000 domestic public companies in USA (as of mid 2022). Most of them trade on one of these 2 US stock exchanges (but not both). US stock exchange also allow trading of many international stocks, which are public companies in some other countries (1500 such foreign companies are listed on these 2 stock exchanges). Likewise, US stocks trade on other stock exchanges of the world too.

  • NYSE: NYSE or New York Stock Exchange is the oldest exchange (formed in 1792, but got it's NYSE name in 1817), and has stringent requirements for listing. It has about 2500 companies listed with market cap of $23T ( as of Jan, 2018). About 2000 of these are domestic companies, while remaining 500 are foreign companies from 45 different countries (as of mid 2022).
  • NASDAQ: Nasdaq exchange on the other hand is a much newer exchange formed in 1971. It's an electronic exchange, and listing requirements are not as stringent as NYSE, so most small growing companies list on Nasdaq. It has about 4000 listings with total market cap of over $11T (as of Jan 2018). About 3000 of these are domestic companies, while remaining 1000 are foreign companies (as of mid 2022).
    • NOTE: Nasdaq inc is the company that owns Nasdaq exchange, that is itself listed on Nasdaq exchange. It's ticker symbol is NDAQ and it makes money from listing all these companies on it's stock exchange. It's essential to differentiate b/w Nasdaq Inc and Nasdaq exchange, they are not the same.

This is a chart from 2022 showing market cap/number of companies for both exchanges: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1277216/nyse-nasdaq-comparison-number-listed-companies/

As of Nov, 2021, NYSE had total market cap of $28T, while Nasdaq was $24T due to rapid rise in stock price of Tech companies.Tech stocks have since then cratered, but the total valuation of these companies is still mind boggling at $40T as of the end of 2022. To get US market cap, we have to subtract these foreign companies, which Wilshire 5000 index does (It lists only domestic companies,find link FIXME??)

Major indices in USA: (we'll look at these US indices in detail in other section)

  • S&P500 (Standard and Poor's 500): This is the most widely used index which has top 500 companies from both NYSE and Nasdaq. It incorporates all sectors of market, and gives a weighted sum to the companies based on their market cap. The S&P 500 represents about 80% of the total value of US stock markets.
  • DOW (Dow Jones Industrial Average): This has top 30 blue chip (mega cap) companies, and the index aims to be representative of America’s economy. As a result, industries tend to be represented proportionally. However, the biggest drawback is that it's constituents are weighted based on stock price and not based on market cap. This can really distort the real picture, as stock price has nothing to do with total market value of the company (i.e a company with lower stock price may have much higher market cap than another company with much higher stock price). So, even smaller companies may have big influence on the index.
  • Nasdaq 100: This has 100 of the largest technology companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The weights of the constituents in the index is based on the companies market capitalizations, but it's largely tech stocks here. It's very volatile by nature, but has delivered the best return since it's inception.

China:

Stocks listed on Chinese exchanges have total market cap of $14T as of 2020, which makes them the second largest, though well behind USA. Reason on why the market cap of all companies listed on chinese exchanges is much lower than those of US exchanges, is primarily due to the fact that chinese exchanges mostly allow domestic companies to be listed on their exchange. They also have a concept of A-shares and B-shares. A-shares are securities issued by domestic companies of China, that trade in local currency yuan Renminbi aka RMB. B-shares are shares issued by Foreign companies that want to list on Chinese exchanges, and they trade in USD. A-shares are for domestic investor, while B-shares are for foreign investors. Any investor can buy both A and B shares, however, it's easier for domestic investors to buy A shares, while it's easier for foreigners to buy B shares. A-shares account for 2/3 of Chinese market cap, while B-shares account for remaining 1/3. So, 2/3 of $14T = $9T, which is close to the market cap of all domestic Chinese companies. Mainland China has 3 stock exchanges: Shanghai Stock exchange, Shenzhen stock exchange and Beijing Stock exchange.

  • SSE: Shanghai stock exchange is the biggest stock exchange of china with market cap of $8T of all listed companies (3rd largest in the world behind NYSE and Nasdaq),
  • SZSE: Shenzhen stock exchange is the seventh largest in the world with market cap of $6T (as of 2021 end).
  • BSE: Beijing stock exchange is the newest exchange which was established in 2021. NEEQ exchange was reformed and transformed into BSE. Primary purpose was to serve small and medium sized enterpries (SME).

 Major indices in China:

  • SSE Composite index: This is the most widely used index used to track performance of Chinese equities. It tracks all 2000 or companies listed on SSE. It's base day is Dec, 1990 and base value is 100. As can be seen, in first 10 years, the index went from 100 to 2000 implying a 20X growth in just 10 years. It reached an all time high of 6000 in 2007, but since then has remained below 4000.
  • CSI 300 (Chinese Securities index 300): This replicates the performance of the top 300 stocks traded on SSE and SZSE. It has two sub-indexes: the CSI 100 and the CSI 200 Index. Over the years, it has been deemed the Chinese counterpart of the S&P500 index and a better gauge of the Chinese stock market than the more traditional SSE Composite index. It's base day is Dec, 2004 and base value is 1000. As can be seen, this index has mostly gone up and given better return than SSE Composite index. Reason are: first it's more diversified, and secondly it's base value is taken at a time, when the market was pretty low.

Europe:

Total market cap of all companies in Europe is about €15T (in currency Euro which is at par with US dollar, i.e 1 USD = 1 Euro) as of Nov, 2021 (no credible source, just an estimation). While every European country has its own stock exchange, there are five major ones that have a combined market capital of over $1 trillion. Two of these are included in the top 10 global stock exchanges - Euronext and London Stock exchange.

  • Euronext N.V: Euronext, also known as European New Exchange Technology (Euronext N.V.), was founded by the merger of European Union (EU) stock exchanges at the turn of the 21st century, following the introduction of the common currency known as Euro. Euronext had a total market cap of $7T as of 2021, and is the 4th largest stock exchange as measured by market cap.
  • LSE: London Stock Exchange has 2 main markets on which companies trade - main market and alternative market. The main market is home to over 1,300 large companies from 60 countries. LSE has a total market cap of about ~$3.5T and is the 10th largest stock exchange.

Major indices in Europe:

  • FTSE-100 (The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index): Also called the “Footsie” or UK-100, it tracks the 100 largest companies listed on LSE, in terms of market capitalization. Top companies in the index are Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, HSBC, BP, etc. It includes foreign companies too that are based outside of UK.
  • DAX 30 (Deutscher Aktien Index): This index includes 30 of Germany's largest stocks listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE). The DAX represents about 80 percent of the total market value of shares traded on German Stock Exchange. It's price weighted rather than market cap weighted. Major companies are BMW, Volkswagen, Lufthansa, Adidas, Siemens, Merck, etc.
  • STOXX: STOXX is a swiss index provider formed in 1997. It came up with several indices starting in 1998 which became very popular. It's most popular indices are as follows:
    • EURO STOXX 50: This index is made up of fifty of the largest and most liquid stocks in EuroZone countries only (not All of Europe). The index was introduced in 1998. It was retroactively plotted back starting from year 1986, with base value of 1000 assigned to the index for Dec 31, 1991 closing. As of 2021, it's value is ~4000, implying 4X appreciation in 30 years ( => 5% return per year). The total market cap was about €3.6T as of April 2021. This index has 60% market cap of all of Eurozone stock market.
    • STOXX EUROPE 50: Since EURO STOXX 50 was limited to EuroZone countries only, STOXX EUROPE 50 index was designed to capture 50 largest stocks in all of European countries (which includes 18 countries). It's very similar to EURO STOXX 50 and performance is also similar.
    • STOXX EUROPE 600 (STOXX 600 or SXXP): This index contains 600 large, mid and small companies among 17 European countries, covering approximately 90% of the market capitalization of the European stock market (not limited to the EuroZone). The top countries that make up about 70% of the index are UK (composing around 22.3% of the index), France (composing around 16.6% of the index), Switzerland (composing around 14.9% of the index) and Germany (composing around 14.1% of the index). It's base value was taken as 100 as of Dec 1991. It reached an all time high of ~500 in Nov, 2021. The total market cap was about €12T as of April 2021. If we go with STOXX600 capturing 90% of the market, then total Europe Stock market cap would be around $13T, which closely matches with $15T of European Stock market cap.

Japan:

Japan has Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) owned and operated by Japan Exchange group as of 2011. Japan Exchange group also owns 2 other stock exchanges in Japan, and is the only exchange of Japan. Japan Exchange group has market cap of ~$7T and is fifth largest stock exchange.

Major indices in Japan:

  • Nikkei 225: This index is the most popular index outside of US indices. It measures the performance of 225 large, publicly owned companies in Japan from a wide array of industry sectors. It started to be calculated a long time back since 1950. I believe the base value was 100. It was retroactively calculated since 1914 when the value was 20. The index went from 20 in 1915 to 40 in 1945 (annual return of 2%-3%). After the end of world war 2, index went to 100 by 1950 and then to 1000 by 1960 (implying 20% yearly return). By 1975, it reached 4000, and by 1989 it reached 40,000 which was the peak. From then it crashed, and remained close to 10,000 until 2012. By 2021, it manged to get back to 30,000 level.
  • Topix: Topix index tracks all 1700 domestic companies listed on TSE. It's market cap was ¥200T as of 2011 (100 yen = 1 USD, so market cap was ~$2T).

Hong Kong:

Hong Kong Stock Exchange is the 6th largest stock exchange, with a market cap of about $6T (as of 2021).

India:

2 largest stock exchange in India are Bombay stock exchange (BSE) and National Stock exchange (NSE). They have market cap of around $4T each as of 2021. BSE is the oldest exchange which was started in 1875, while NSE is the newer one started in 1992. About 4000 companies trade on the stock exchanges at BSE and NSE. A company can list it's shares on both NSE and BSE and you can buy/sell interchangeably. As of 2020, about 5K firms are listed on BSE and 2K on NSE. Apart from these there are 20 regional Exchanges connected via the Inter-Connected Stock Exchange (ICSE).

Major indices in India:

  • Sensex: This comprises of 30 largest companies traded on BSE. It was created in 1986 by S&P. It comprises of about 45% of BSE market cap. In Dec 2023, Sensex market cap was about $1.7T, while BSE market cap was $4T.
  • Nifty: It's known as Nifty 50 or CNX Nifty. It comprises of 50 largest companies traded on NSE. It was created in 1996. 

Canada:

Toronto:

Australia:

Korea:

Russia:

Brazil:

Latin America: Brazil and Mexico are the only 2 countries relevant here, as they have GDP > $1T and have large population over 100M. Brazil's stock exchange is B3, while Mexico's stock exchange is is

Major indices:

World:

There are couple of world indices that try to mimick