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In this article, we will look into the 30 largest stock exchanges in the world. If you want to skip our detailed analysis you can go directly to the 10 Largest Stock Exchanges in the World.
Global Stock Market Outlook 2024 and Top Performers
According to the April issue of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), the global stock market valuation, defined as the market cap of all listed companies across the globe, reached $111.85 trillion in February 2024, recording a moderate growth of 1.48%. As of February 2024, there are 54,625 total domestic and foreign listed companies in the global stock market. In February, trading activity showed strong growth, with the number of trades reaching over 4.34 trillion.
On April 1, Forbes reported that the US stock market experienced a strong first quarter in 2024. In March, the S&P 500 recorded total returns of 3.2%, driven by the positive outlook of the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average grew by 6.1% and NASDAQ grew by over 9.3% in the first quarter of 2024. Sectors including technology, consumer cyclical, and consumer defensive fueled the market growth in the first quarter, generating total returns of over 8% or more, each.
Among the best-performing S&P 500 stocks for the quarter, the leading AI server manufacturing company, Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) exhibited strong performance and led the market by a substantial margin, recording a 255% year-to-date increase. Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) has recorded a noteworthy return of 502% since the start of 2023. Another leading company manufacturing AI chips, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has maintained its strong growth in 2024 so far, after being the top-performing S&P 500 stock of 2023. The company’s market cap reached $2.29 trillion in the first quarter of 2024. This can be attributed to a year-to-date surge of 82% and a 321% increase since the beginning of 2023 in NVIDIA Corporation’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares. Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) and NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) are also among the 10 unstoppable tech stocks to buy now.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is making huge moves in AI and investors and analysts are bullish on the stock. Over the past 3 months, the stock has received 39 Buy ratings from Wall Street analysts. Its average price target of $989.5 represents an upside of 15% from current levels. As of April 5, the stock has returned over 215% over the past 12 months. Here is what Palm Valley Capital Fund said about NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Such beguiling prognostications are indigenous to Wall Street—the biggest showcase of them all. The ferocious march higher of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s stock on expectations of its continued dominance in artificial intelligence (AI) chips might even confound the galley slavedriver in Ben-Hur. Ramming speed!
Nvidia’s share price seems to imply the firm will soon control nearly the entire global semiconductor market (over half a trillion in sales vs. Nvidia’s current $60 billion) while maintaining an operating margin of 54%—unprecedented for a hardware company. Leading hardware firms rarely retain their supremacy forever: IBM, Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Cisco all fell from their storied perches…”
Analysts are also bullish on Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI). On March 25, Northland Capital Markets analyst Nehal Chokshi raised the price target on Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) to $1,300 from $925 and maintained an Outperform rating. Over the past 3 months, the stock has received 7 Buy ratings from Wall Street analysts. Here is what ClearBridge Investments had to say about Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“While large cap benchmarks get a lot of attention for a handful of mega cap stocks driving the lion’s share of performance, we would highlight even more extreme and unprecedented concentration in small cap benchmarks. Year to date, one stock, Super Micro Computer, Inc.(NASDAQ:SMCI) has driven 37% of the return of the benchmark.
Currently, SMCI is the largest constituent by weight in our benchmark, and it peaked at over 4.5%, representing the largest individual security weight in a monthly dataset going back to 1985. That represented a weighting 83% higher than the second-largest weight (from 1999). Moreover, MicroStrategy at its peak this past quarter would have represented the fourth-largest security in the 38 years of the monthly dataset. We are hard-pressed to recall another instance where the largest constituent of our benchmark was also added to the S&P 500, as SMCI was this March. We would note that SMCI currently is a $61 billion market capitalization company and MicroStrategy boasts a market capitalization of $28 billion, both well above the $6.8 billion weighted average market cap of the Strategy.
Enthusiasm for AI and bitcoin have fueled this atypical concentration and performance distortion. Bitcoin rallied fast and furiously following the SEC’s approval of the first bitcoin ETF in early January, while the AI infrastructure build-out has had a narrow set of beneficiaries. Against this backdrop, the ClearBridge Small Cap Growth Strategy underperformed its benchmark. We are disappointed by this result, although 79% of the relative underperformance was due to not owning these two large benchmark holdings, which have fundamental and governance factors that have caused us, as long-term investors focused on quality sustainable growth stories, to avoid them.”
You can also look at the 10 AI Stocks That Will Skyrocket and 11 Stocks That Will Profit From AI Evolution.
European Stocks Tumble After Strong Q1
On April 5, Reuters reported that the European market witnessed a significant decline after a strong first quarter, amid hawkish comments from a US Federal Reserve official, reversing the bullish sentiment that led to gains in the first quarter of 2024.
On April 4, Minneapolis Fed President, Neel Kashkari appeared at a virtual LinkedIn event where he was asked about the expected rate cuts in 2024. The Federal Reserve official expressed his shock over the economy’s resilience despite the rising interest rates. He further added that with significant growth in the job market, GDP, and consumer spending, we might not need to cut rates. He said:
“Maybe the dynamics that we have right now are actually sustainable. But, you know, there are a lot of ifs underlying that question and that hypothesis or that scenario that I just articulated. So we need to see what ultimately happens with both the labor market and with inflation. Our dual mandate ultimately is what drives our rate path.”
The idea floated by the Fed official doused hopes for interest rate cuts and led to the stumbling of European stocks on April 5. The STOXX Europe 600 (.STOXX) declined 1.2% and reached its lowest since mid-October 2023. Benchmark indices across the major European countries including DAX Performance Index, FTSE MIB Index (.FTMIB), and IBEX 35 (.IBEX), declined by over 1% each.
The drop can also be attributed to the ongoing Middle East crisis. The increase in Brent crude prices and the suspicions regarding supply disruption, led to a 1.8% drop in the travel and leisure stocks, the STOXX 600 Travel & Leisure PR Index (.SXTP), followed by a decline of around 1% and more in other indices and stocks.
Increased Foreign Capital and Investments in Asian Stocks
The impact of the Fed official’s remarks about no rate cuts, led to major declines in the Asian stock market. However, the first quarter of 2024 presented a great outlook for the stock market in the region. On April 5, Reuters reported that Asian stocks surged in March, driven by the increased traction from foreign investors. The quarter was recorded as the best for foreign investments over the past three years, fueled by expectations of relaxed monetary policies and economic growth in the region, specifically China. According to the stock exchange data across India, South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, foreign investors bought a total of $8.53 billion of regional equities in March. The total inflow for the quarter reached $18.57 billion, recording the highest investments since December 2020.
Now that we have discussed the stock market outlook for 2024 and talked about the major markets, let’s have a look at the 30 largest stock exchanges in the world.
Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash
Methodology
To compile our list of the 30 largest stock exchanges in the world, we utilized the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) market statistics for stock exchanges. We began our research by looking at the 2022 annual market statistics data to determine the major stock exchanges in the world. This provided us with a list of 87 stock exchanges. We then shortlisted the top stock exchanges based on the 2022 filing’s data. After that, we sourced the latest market capitalization of the shortlisted exchanges from WFE. Our list ranks the 30 largest stock exchanges in the world in ascending order of their domestic market capitalization of listed companies, as of February 2024.
Please note that for the London Stock Exchange, the latest available market capitalization data was for September 2023, and therefore we have cited that.
30 Largest Stock Exchanges in the World
30. Iran Fara Bourse Securities Exchange
Market Capitalization as of February 2024: $323.14 billion
Market Identifier Code: IFBX
Iran Fara Bourse Securities Exchange is ranked among the largest stock exchanges in the world. It is headquartered in Tehran, and is the largest debt market and the second largest stock market in Iran. As of February 2024, the stock exchange has a market capitalization of $323.14 billion. The total number of listed companies on the exchange reached 195 in February 2024, recording an over 12%…
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2024-04-16 03:14:00
