Here’s the map of the world, if size were determined by market cap
Japan, US swell to epic proportions
By Steve Goldstein, D.C. Bureau Chief
Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently published a report transforming many of their investment themes into maps.
One of note is what the world would look like if sized by market capitalization.
The U.S. is still looking like the U.S. — and Japan is pretty hefty — but where did China go? And how is Hong Kong bigger than the mainland?
Some readers have noted that China looks unusually small — that’s because the methodology here is to use MSCI’s numbers. The index provider still keeps out the so-called A-shares from inclusion in its indexes, for reasons including capital mobility. Were the A-shares included, even after the rout in that country, the market cap of China would swell by tenfold.
Russia, on this map, is basically the size of Finland. (A country that reportedly Vladimir Putin has designs for, though that’s a story for another day.)
The U.S. market capitalization is $19.8 trillion, or 52% of world market cap, which the brokerage says is the highest since the 1980s.
Russia, for what it’s worth, is the largest country by area.
