A French president once asserted, to much acclaim, that the U.S. dollar’s status as a “reserve currency” conferred an exorbitant privilege on our nation. As I write this, members of the six-nation BRICS bloc are meeting in South Africa. The ways in which the dollar’s status harms these nations is a central topic and measures […]
Visualizing Foreign Holdings Of U.S. Equities
Share
Share
Trending
How much of the U.S. stock market is owned by foreigners?
According to the U.S. Treasury department, foreigners owned $9.17 trillion worth of U.S. equities through the end of the second quarter of 2020, which is the equivalent of 35.7% of the total market capitalization of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) at that time. That represents a slight increase over last year s figures. The following chart presents the raw numbers:
In 2002, foreigners owned just $1.4 trillion, or the equivalent of 15% of the S&P 500 s market cap at that time. In between, the share of U.S. equities held by foreigners rose steadily to peak at 36.5% in 2015, but has declined in recent years. In the next chart, we ve shown how the foreign-held share of U.S. equities, which we re representing as the market cap of the S&P 500 has changed from 2002 through 2020.