American stock markets have dominated global trading for most of the last 120 years. Here’s how other big economies measure up

Nicolas RappBy Nicolas RappInformation Graphics Director
Nicolas RappInformation Graphics Director

Nicolas Rapp is the former information graphics director at Fortune.

Matthew HeimerBy Matthew HeimerExecutive Editor, Features
Matthew HeimerExecutive Editor, Features

Matt Heimer oversees Fortune's longform storytelling in digital and print and is the editorial coordinator of Fortune magazine. He is also a co-chair of the Fortune Global Forum and the lead editor of Fortune's annual Change the World list.

Chart shows the top equity markets in the world

Every year, China gets closer to catching the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy. When it comes to their stock markets, however, there’s no contest. Since 1992, China’s GDP has grown 6.5 times as fast as America’s—but U.S. stock returns have been 3.5 times as high.

Indeed, U.S. stocks have dominated global investing, as measured by market capitalization, for most of the past 125 years. For that, you can partly thank New Deal­–era regulations that tamed the Wild West of U.S. markets, making them attractive to risk-averse investors worldwide. And compared with China, where state-owned companies drive the economy, the U.S. gets more growth from publicly traded companies. But supremacy can be fleeting. Just ask Japan, whose markets soared in the late 1980s, only to nose-dive amid asset bubbles and massive overborrowing. In other words: Don’t get too cocky, U.S. stock bulls.

This article appears in the April/May 2024 issue of Fortune with the headline, “An American century (and more) for stocks.”

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