I came across a bunch of charts in the past few weeks about Europe’s economic and market struggles.
Let’s take a look.
These charts that show how the biggest companies in the U.S. stock market are as big or bigger than some of the biggest economic powers in Europe always get me:
The UK has something like 1,900 stocks on the London exchange. The main exchanges in France and Germany have roughly 800 and 500 stocks, respectively. Nvidia has fewer than 30,000 employees.
I’m not sure there is anything actionable about charts like this, but it makes you think.
The Economist has a chart that shows the slide in both GDP and stock market capitalization in Europe this century:
Europe makes up 25% of world GDP but just a little more than 15% of global stock market capitalization. America has roughly the same weight in GDP at 25% but makes up more than 60% of the world market cap.
The United States (China too) is dominating Europe on the private market side of the ledger too:
Things were fairly even in the early-2010s. Not anymore.
The Financial Times has a chart that shows the divergence in productivity since just before the Great Financial Crisis:
It’s like someone flipped a switch after the 2008 crash when U.S. workers and companies became more efficient than the Eurozone.
The Wall Street Journal had a story this week that makes it sound like free-spending American tourists are the Eurozone’s only economic driver:
They show that tourist countries have experienced higher growth since the pandemic:
This is probably a bit of a stretch, but you can’t deny that the Eurozone has fallen behind this century when it comes to economic and financial market growth.
Here’s a look at European
