The Paris-based World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), an association of 58 publicly regulated stock market exchanges around the world, recently released updated data on its monthly measure of the total market capitalization of the world’s major equity markets through the end of October. Here are some highlights:
1. As of the end of October, the total value of equities in those 58 major stock markets reached $62.64 trillion. That was just slightly below the all-time record monthly high of $62.77 trillion for global equity valuation in October 2007, several months before the global economic slowdown and financial crisis started, and caused global equity values to plummet by more than 50% (and by almost $34 trillion), from $62.8 trillion at the end of 2007 to only $29.1 trillion by early 2009 (see chart above).
2. Global equities gained almost $2 trillion in value during the month of October, and increased by 3.2% from September.
3. Compared to a year earlier, October’s world stock market capitalization increased by 19.6%, led by a 22.2% gain in the Europe-Africa-Middle East region, followed by gains of 20.8% in the Americas and 15.4% in the Asia-Pacific region.
4. By individual country, the largest year-over-year gains for October were recorded in Greece (118%), Ireland (53.2%), Bermuda (47.3%), the UAE (40.4%) and Taiwan (37.3%). In the US, the NYSE capitalization increased by 25.7% and the NASDAQ by 27.2%. The biggest losses in equity value over the last year were posted in Peru (-15.9%), Turkey (-14.5%) and Cyprus (-14.5%).
Compared to the recessionary low of $29.1 trillion in February 2009, the total world stock market capitalization more than doubled (115.3% increase) to the current level of $62.64 trillion, recapturing almost all of the global equity value that was lost due to the severe global recession and the various financial, mortgage and housing crises in 2008 and 2009. The global stock market rally over the last five years has added back more than $33.5 trillion to world equity values since 2009, and demonstrates the incredible resiliency of economies and financial markets to recover and prosper, even following the worst financial crisis and global economic slowdown in generations.
