Coca Cola Option Return Rate
Rate Of Return2025 Global Major Stock Market Rankings
A successful investor owes 85% to correct asset allocation, 10% to the skill of selecting investment targets, and 5% must rely on God's blessing.
—William Sharpe
An indisputable fact is that the U.S. stock market is the largest in the world, accounting for about 40% of the total global stock market capitalization. However, what investors care about is not the size of a stock market but its return rate.
So, where is the stock market with the highest return rate in the world?
According to historical data, over the past 100 and 50 years, the U.S. stock market's return rate has been unparalleled and far ahead!
For example, as of September 2025, the average annualized return rate of the S&P 500 index over the past 50 years was 11%. If you invested a fixed amount monthly, the average annualized return rate was 10.9%.
So, how have other regional stock markets performed?
Today, I will again cite several authoritative websites, such as morningstar.com, to compare the historical returns of the U.S. stock market with those of other major economies' stock markets and see which is truly the strongest.
For each stock market, I will list the average annualized return rate of its benchmark index over the past ten years and provide the cumulative investment return over that period. For fairness, all calculations are in U.S. dollars. For simplicity, I have also ignored tax factors.
Region Annualized Cumulative Return
U.S. 13.6% 258%
Canada 10.6% 174%
Italy 9.9% 157%
France 9.2% 141%
Australia 9.0% 136%
India 8.6% 128%
Singapore 8.2% 120%
Japan 8.0% 116%
Germany 7.7% 110%
South Korea 7.6% 108%
Saudi Arabia 7.0% 106%
U.K. 6.9% 95%
Hong Kong 5.0% 63%
China 4.3% 52%
From the table above, it is clear that the U.S. stock market remains the strongest in the solar system; its annualized return rate is a full 3% higher than Canada, which ranks second!
For example, if you had invested $1 million in the U.S. stock market ten years ago, today you would be sitting on $3.58 million. But if someone else had invested in the U.K. stock market, her assets would only be $1.95 million, just 54% of yours.
Moreover, most companies in the S&P 500 index are multinationals. As a whole, about 40% of their revenue comes from regions outside the U.S. Therefore, by investing in U.S. stock indices, we are already benefiting from global economic and population growth. Thus, there is no need to allocate investments to other regions' stock markets for diversification.
If you are investing in other regions' stock markets or still trading individual stocks instead of index funds, carefully calculate your average annualized return rate over the past ten years and ask yourself seriously: Is my return rate 13.6%?
There is a saying in the U.S.: If you can't beat them, join them!
My investment advice to everyone is: Embrace the winner—go all in on U.S. stocks! Give up individual stocks and only buy indices!
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