5 ms·

It's tough, it's also part of the reason so little is done here, just compare the size of market capitalization of say DAX40 (German top 40) or CAC40 (French to

It's tough, it's also part of the reason so little is done here, just compare the size of market capitalization of say DAX40 (German top 40) or CAC40 (French top 40): DAX40 $1.9T CAC40 $2.8T There are single companies in US that exceed both of these values.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Because the European capital markets are very different with far less local money going into it, more bank funding etc. The divergence between the US and Europe there is more than 100 years old.
gkedzierski 3y ago
EURO STOXX 50 would probably be a better benchmark, which has a total market cap of around €4.0T, which is more than any single company. (your general point stands though, it's nowhere near the US market)
Scarblac 3y ago
Part of that is that you're taking a fixed number of companies. So if Europe has more, but smaller companies, the value of the top-40 would be lower than if they had fewer but larger companies. To me the first sounds healthier, everything else being equal.
- Gare 3y ago
  Also, lots of large European companies are privately held. For example: IKEA, Schwartz group (Kaufland, Lidl), Bosch, Aldi...
  - walthamstow 3y ago
    LEGO too
  - anonylizard 3y ago
    All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. US has new upstarts like Tesla and Nvidia, which at their prime, add like 1 IKEA per fortnight to their market cap.
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      >All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. I read an interesting point recently: Austria's 100 wealthiest families have two thirds of the country's wealth, and zero have earned their money from technology; they've all inherited it. How different would the same list be for Germany? One, perhaps two families earned their fortunes from tech (and by "tech" I mean "SAP")?
    - wongarsu 3y ago
      I'm not sure if "the market doesn't know how to price Tesla and is rapidly fluctuating up and down" is really saying much. In terms of revenue Bosch is comparable to Nvidia and Tesla. IKEA is about half that and Schwarz is about Nvidia and Tesla combined, but of course those two are bad comparisons because they are in the rather unexciting retail market. But generally I agree that exciting upstarts that reach fortune 500 size tend to be US companies.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA.
      - TMWNN 3y ago
        >That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA. Ah yes, feel free to name all the other European startups that are in the right place at the right time with their own technology. Maybe one of these days you'll acknowledge that there may be a reason why such companies keep appearing in the US and East Asia, and not across the Atlantic. Yes, I know that Nvidia is 30 years old. That does not change my point. Where were the European GPU startups back in the 1990s, let alone today? (This is where you inevitably cite ASML. Psst: Look into where and who developed ASML's lithography technology, and what companies were not allowed to build off it.)

RandomLensman 3y ago

Because the European capital markets are very different with far less local money going into it, more bank funding etc. The divergence between the US and Europe there is more than 100 years old.

gkedzierski 3y ago

EURO STOXX 50 would probably be a better benchmark, which has a total market cap of around €4.0T, which is more than any single company. (your general point stands though, it's nowhere near the US market)

Scarblac 3y ago

Part of that is that you're taking a fixed number of companies. So if Europe has more, but smaller companies, the value of the top-40 would be lower than if they had fewer but larger companies. To me the first sounds healthier, everything else being equal.

Gare 3y ago
Also, lots of large European companies are privately held. For example: IKEA, Schwartz group (Kaufland, Lidl), Bosch, Aldi...
- walthamstow 3y ago
  LEGO too
- anonylizard 3y ago
  All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. US has new upstarts like Tesla and Nvidia, which at their prime, add like 1 IKEA per fortnight to their market cap.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    >All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. I read an interesting point recently: Austria's 100 wealthiest families have two thirds of the country's wealth, and zero have earned their money from technology; they've all inherited it. How different would the same list be for Germany? One, perhaps two families earned their fortunes from tech (and by "tech" I mean "SAP")?
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    I'm not sure if "the market doesn't know how to price Tesla and is rapidly fluctuating up and down" is really saying much. In terms of revenue Bosch is comparable to Nvidia and Tesla. IKEA is about half that and Schwarz is about Nvidia and Tesla combined, but of course those two are bad comparisons because they are in the rather unexciting retail market. But generally I agree that exciting upstarts that reach fortune 500 size tend to be US companies.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA.
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      >That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA. Ah yes, feel free to name all the other European startups that are in the right place at the right time with their own technology. Maybe one of these days you'll acknowledge that there may be a reason why such companies keep appearing in the US and East Asia, and not across the Atlantic. Yes, I know that Nvidia is 30 years old. That does not change my point. Where were the European GPU startups back in the 1990s, let alone today? (This is where you inevitably cite ASML. Psst: Look into where and who developed ASML's lithography technology, and what companies were not allowed to build off it.)