- Bryan Taylor, “Finaeon Guide to Global Stock Markets: 2025 Edition,” SSRN, April 7, 2025, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5208302.
- Bryan Taylor, “Five Financial Eras,” SSRN, April 1, 2024, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4780659.
- Doug Henwood, “Beyond Globophobia,” The Nation, December 1, 2003, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/beyond-globophobia/; John Maynard Keynes, “Historical Illustrations,” in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 6, A Treatise on Money: The Applied Theory of Money, ed. Elizabeth Johnson and Donald Moggridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 132–86, https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781139520652.009.
- David McWilliams, The History of Money: A Story of Humanity, foreword by Michael Lewis (Henry Holt and Co., 2025).
- James Hibberd, “‘Game of Thrones’ Author George R.R. Martin: Why He Wrote The Red Wedding,” CNN, June 7, 2013, https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/07/showbiz/tv/game-martin-red-wedding-ew.
- Bryan Taylor, “Finaeon Guide to Global Stock Markets 2025 Edition,” SSRN, April 7, 2025, https://ssrn.com/abstract=5208302.
- “Charlie Munger Reveals Secrets to Getting Rich,” BBC interview, posted by CharlieMungerChannel, July 13, 2012, YouTube video, 3:22, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wkp04Ppt4&t=8s.
DATA SOURCES
Finaeon’s World Index extends from the beginning of stock markets in Amsterdam in 1602 to the present day. Until now, no one has calculated a World Index that precedes 1900, and no one has calculated an index that is reweighted on a regular basis. Now, an index that provides a complete history of global equity markets is available.
Finaeon also provides world bond indices that can be compared to the global equity indices and calculates global sub-indices that include the World excluding the United States, the World excluding the US and UK, a European Index, and an index for Emerging Markets among others. Without these global composites, it is impossible to understand the behavior of stocks, bonds, and bills over the past four hundred years.
Data from 1602 to 1792 is market-cap weighted by company. The index includes thirty-eight companies from the United Kingdom, three from France, three from the Netherlands, and twenty-nine from the United States. We have data on the price, dividends, and shares outstanding for each of the seventy-three companies. If any of those three variables was unavailable, we excluded the company from the index.
Beginning in 1792, we use indices from each country as the basis for the index, and weight each country according to actual or estimated market caps for that country. The market caps are revised every five years, and these are used to weight each country in the index for the next five years. We use the market caps on December 31, 1914, for the weights between 1915 and 1919; the market cap on December 31, 1919, for the weights between 1920 and 1925; and so on. Price and return indices are monthly in periodicity, using end-of-month values. All values were converted to British pounds for the data through 1792, and all data after 1792 were converted to United States Dollars. Data for the price indices, return indices, and stock market capitalization that were used to calculate these indices are available from Finaeon.
Since 1792, we have calculated indices for each country that had trading going on within that country, or had companies listed on exchanges in London, Paris, Amsterdam, or another exchange. The index includes data for the Netherlands (1602), India (1657), the United Kingdom (1694), France (1718), Denmark (1759), the United States (1784), Ireland (1792), Austria (1817), Mexico (1824), the Netherlands Indies (1824), Australia (1825), Brazil (1825), Canada (1825), Belgium (1831), Spain (1833), South Africa (1834), Germany (1835), Czechoslovakia (1836), Egypt and Italy (1856), Turkey (1856), Hungary (1859), New Zealand (1862), Argentina (1865), Russia (1865), Sweden (1870), China (1871), Japan (1878), Portugal and Switzerland (1899), as well as countries for which data begins in the twentieth century.
The GFD US-100 is used from 1792 until 1985 and the OEX is used from 1986 to date. Global Financial Data has collected data on all major United States exchanges going back to 1791 as well as data on over-the-counter shares since 1865. The data includes not only share price data, but information on corporate actions (dividends and splits) as well as shares outstanding. These data sources enable us to calculate cap-weighted price and return indices for the United States that accurately reflect what an investment in the 100 largest stocks each year would have produced for investors. GFD set up criteria for determining which stocks are included or excluded from its indices. GFD has followed these rules for inclusion: 1) there had to be at least 9 observations per year, 2) Dividend data have to be available for each stock in order that both price and return indices can be calculated, and 3) There had to be share outstanding information available so the stock could be included in a capitalization-weighted index.The index includes all shares that met these criteria from 1791 to 1824, the top 50 shares by capitalization are used from 1825 to 1850 and the top 100 shares by capitalization from 1851 to 2017. To choose which companies to include, shares were weighted by capitalization during the first month of each year and included if they were among the 100 largest shares in the United States. It was assumed that the stocks were held for the rest of the year, and in January of the next year, the same selection methodology was used to choose which shares to hold for the coming year. Each year, the list of the 100 largest companies was recalculated and a new list of stocks was introduced. For continuity purposes, if a stock missed a year, i.e. the stock was in the top 100 in 1914 and 1916, but not in 1915, the stock was included in the index in 1915 even though this put over 100 stocks in the index.
To see all references throughout the book, please visit: https://mebfaber.com/endnotes.
