The United States and China, the two largest economies, have the world’s largest stock exchanges based on market capitalization, according to data from the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE).
Together the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), NASDAQ and the Shanghai Stock Exchange concentrated around 48.15% of the entire market value, adding a market value close to 50.595 billion dollars as of June this year.
The total value of global stock markets was $105.074 trillion through June, according to the WFE.
By far, the NYSE is crowned as the stock market with the highest market value, reaching a market cap of 25.857 billion dollars in June. NASDAQ is the second largest Stock Exchange with a value of 17.363 billion dollars. On the third podium is the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of 7.374 billion dollars.
In the fourth and fifth position are Euronext, the largest stock market in Europe, and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, which reported a capitalization value of 6,419 billion and 5,289 billion dollars, in that order.
China has four stock exchanges, in addition to Shanghai and Shenzhen, operates the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the new Beijing Stock Exchange (for which no data is available) focused on small and medium-sized companies. In June, the four reported a value of 17.643 billion dollars, which represents 16.79 percent of the entire stock market value.
Jacobo Rodríguez, director of Financial Analysis at Black Wallstreet Capital (BWC), explained that the performance of the stock markets is a reflection of the economies of the countries, which is true in the case of the United States and China, as they are the major economic powers have the largest stock markets in the world.
James Salazar, deputy director of economic analysis at CI Banco, explained that the United States is the world’s leading economy (with a GDP of 22.997 billion dollars in 2021), but also, as a country with “greater economic freedom”, companies they can look to their equity market to grow and develop. In the case of China, the world’s second-largest economy (with a GDP of 17.458 trillion dollars in 2021), it has mechanisms to support public companies, he added.
For its part, Mexico, an economy that in recent years had grown just 2.0% on average, the stock market reached a value of 467.910 million dollars in June. Specialists say that the size of its stock market does not reflect the size of its economy.
In Latin America, Brazil has the largest stock market, its market cap is 872,931 million dollars, almost double that of Mexico.
Mexico is in position 16 of the largest economies in the world with a gross domestic product of 1,294 billion dollars in 2021, while Brazil remains in 13th, with a GDP of 1,608 billion dollars, according to data from Statista. (With information from Víctor Barragán)
