Top 10 Largest Companies by Market Cap (1979-2021) 

This video will compare the largest companies in the world by market cap from 1979 to 2021. Enjoy!

I see that in 1987 Japanese companies really take off and dominate this list for a short while. I think this was preceeded by an agreement to devalue the dollar relative to other major currencies via the Plaza Accord of 1985. This is also shortly before there was an asset bubble in Japan which resulted in something like stagflation.

Until 2010: Oil and finance After 2010: Tech

A shout-out to any American, Brit or Australian expats who lived in Japan through the 1980s-mid 1990s, in the financial sector. What a wild ride it was. Watching this video brings up more memories, feelings and emotions than any movie.

That was super cool, thanks for putting it together.

Shell making sure the top 10 isnt just American companies for like half the video lol

Countries that dominated the entire chart atleast once in this video - 1. USA 2. Japan

I did enjoy! Thanks for sharing 👍🏼

I'm 54 and my wife and I are VERY worried about our future, gas and food prices rising daily. We have had our savings dwindle with the cost of living into the stratosphere, and we are finding it impossible to replace them. We can get by, but can't seem to get ahead. My condolences to anyone retiring in this crisis, 30 years nonstop just for a crooked system to take all you worked for...

That brief moment in 2009-2011 where Petrobras made it to like #5, I was in Brazil. The economic and social environment was so different than what it was when I returned for a trip in 2019. It’s so insane how quickly and abruptly economic cycles take hold in Latin America. The relative prosperity that one company’s revenues managed to bring to a nation the size of Brazil, in two years, was palpable (the dollar was almost 1/1 against the real, and gas was super-cheap!), to then see that same population slipping into lower HDI and GDP indexes lower than before the 2010s, and gasoline going up to near American prices. Gnarly

If anyone else was wondering about NTT: “The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, commonly known as NTT, is a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.” - wikipedia

I love these videos. Fascinating.

Amazing video, very inciteful. Although it also highlights the limited scope of Market Cap in assessing comany. For example black rock that is he control shareholder of 7 out of 10 of the top comoanies in the last few years of this diagram.

The momentum of Japan in the latter half of the 1980s was great. Currently, Toyota and Sony are the only Japanese companies in the top 100.

Microsoft stays winning. Never left the top 10 when they hit it. That's super impressive.

One thing I've learned from this is that USA is really good at producing hugely successful businesses. Amazing.

This is so informative, you have done a truly excellent job, bravo!

Microsoft's consistency is amazing. Once they made it to this list, they stayed there.

1986-93 you can really see the Japanese real estate bubble go full force

Great visual 👌 I really enjoyed this

Is there a site or tool to create these animation / charts. Got a work assignment and would be super cool to have one in there.

The past 3-5 years show how overinflated the market really is.

Japan: I used to rule the world

I have no clue how the economy works but it’s sure cool seeing which businesses come out of no where!

Japan companies dominated in 80s

In the final moment, I see TSMC in the board. It's amazing and it stands for Taiwan!

7:39 hacker joins the chat🤣

Ahh that brief moment post GFC that Australia made it to no.4 with BHP Billiton due to the mining boom we had. Didn't realise how powerful they became at that time.

That was well done. Thanks

The growth during the pandemic for the top 5 companies was substantial.

1982 IBM: we have the same market cap as Yugoslavia. 2022 IBM: We almost have the same market cap as Yugoslavia.

Excellent work!!!

GE had a very good run under Jack Welch. The stock got as high as $180 a share. They did a 3/1 split and the shares were $60 each. By the time I retired in 2009 they were $42.50 (when I gave up and cashed in) and eventually got down to about $7 each.

*Japan was the only country that almost completely kicked the USA off this list.*

Great stuff. Kudos!!! Would’ve like to see one of the by asset class, including gold, silver, palladium etc.🙏🏼

Blown away how long it took for Apple to get to $1T, and then in like a year it was up to $2T

1984 was when AT&T was forced to break up their monopoly. Late 80s saw a massive boom in the Japanese economy, hence the sudden explosion of Japanese banks.

Holy crap it was almost all Japanese companies in the 80s

"I miss the 80s." -- Japan

Very cool to see this graphically… So well done !

I loved this! Educational and fun!

Can you tell me where you took the data from?

Growth of Microsoft from 1995 is amazing

Few weird things about this. Firstly, "Shell Oil" and "Royal Dutch Shell" are shown as two companies. "Royal Dutch Shell" isn't the name of any company, the modern company is simply called Shell (changed in 2021), it formed from the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and Shell Logisitics in the early 1900s. It's also not Dutch, it's British - the Dutch part of the company became absorbed by the larger British half. Still, the "Royal Dutch" part doesn't indicate it's nationality - it's simply a legacy. So are ExxonMobil and Mobil (Mobil merged with Exxon to form ExonMobil, they never existed at the same time).

Wow,it’s so cool to see the development of country and industry in a time order

Late 80's early 90's Japanese Companies: hohoh im so rich

Cool visual. Props to the data analyst and programmer who built this 👏

I knew Japan economy was big but wow in 1989 it was massive

Damn. In 1987 Japan just exploded out of the gate. NTT obliterated IBM in terms of market cap. This must be reflective of the huge Japanese market bubble in the Tokyo Stock Exchange that inflated in the late 1980s and popped in the early 1990s.

Microsoft managed to stay in the top 10 despite all the controversies. Amazing! Also, Aramco stunned me at the end.

I was half expecting to see game stop hop in for a split second lol

This could almost be used as indicator for macroeconomic shifts. Every time tech or banks show up in mass vs oil or heavy industrials it results in a crisis. Another interesting view would be to use inflation adjusted dollars.

Saudi Arabia just teleports to the finish line

Very interesting, especially seeing the number of non-American companies I'd never heard of. Thanks for putting this together.

Awesome. i like visualization

Hi, in what program do you do this beautiful infographic?

TSMC I'm proud to be a Taiwanese!

Came for the charts, stayed for the music

7:39 Reminds me of the time when I was a kid, and I showed up to a party where there was a squirtgun fight, and I brought my Super Soaker ZX2000 with a backpack tank of water, and all the other kids just had small, basic super soakers.

You have a good taste in music

Companies of little Holland are always so huge. Here in this video we see Royal Dutch Shell almost all the time in the top 10. In the near future we will see Dutch ASML entering the top 10 (already biggest company of Europe by market cap). And funny fact: the largest company in history was the Dutch East India company with a market cap of estimated at 7 trillion dollars in current standards when corrected for inflation.

I’m super liking this video out of the simple recognition of what a nightmare it must have been making it… props

Fun fact: TSMC is the most significant one on the list. If Taiwan is compromised, electronic devices will come to a halt.

I've been considering buying ETFs/SCHD stocks for retirement, I have set asides $100k but somewhere along the line, I get cold feet maybe because I'm a rookie and have no idea what I'm doing, please I could really use some guideline

The perfect Plaza Accord!

That Aramco Jump Though! 😱

I didn’t know TSMC is this big! Kinda underestimated it

That 1987 stock market crash really hurt... OUCH!

1:37 You feel like the whole world economy is Japan's

Impressed by the resilience of US economy. Plenty of new kids jumping all around it all the time.

Tell me how to make the same videos, what program or application is used for such videos.

Awesome infographic! Do CEO Pay scales over 50 years.

栄枯盛衰…いつかまた日本がバブルまではなくても良い好景気が来ることも願う…

Could you add financial/geopolitical events names in the bottom right space of your videos so we can see the main causes of the major shifts? Thanks for the interesting videos!

Great video! Could be improved by adding company logos.

I once saw someone named Carlos Slim, a Mexican, be the richest man in the world in 2015, richer than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, he wasn't into oil so I dug deeper to see how he made his fortune. He owns a telecommunications company that sells pre-paid phone cards to people, he had 90% of Mexico's population using his phone carriers, so tens of millions of Mexicans were buying "talk time" phone cards every day. Now I know how he made his money.

Considering Taiwan has a tiny population compared to the rest they still manage to keep one company in the top 10 🇹🇼❤️

wonderful dear sir

I forgot about the video about 90 seconds in due to the excellent music!

Nice animation. Almost forgot about how IBM dominated for so long.

It's interesting how NTT really kicked off the Japanese bubble, it quickly grew to 3.5x the market cap of any stock before it, and then at the peak just as profits started getting pulled and market cap started diminishing, other Japanese stocks started entering the top ranks. It's as if they were pulling their profits and investing in the places pulled profits would go, most notably Japanese banks. Then nearly the whole way down, as NTT market cap was dwindling all these other Japanese stocks were growing at a nearly proportional rate to how fast NTT was shrinking until NTT hit like 70% loss and went under 100 billion then it was a race to the door.

I've never heard of NTT, yet they were pulling in top dollar for a while. IBM I have heard of, but I've never seen an IBM product in the UK. Fascinating.

Wish the content creator continued these charts!

Japan literally dominated the worlds economy only in 40 years after WW2 which is insane

80's Japan was crazy

This chart shows exactly where the bubbles are at a given time. Not some of the companies, but ALL of them, no matter where they’re from.

That was cool because of the plot I expected more from china and I didn't expect Saudi Aranco appearing out of nowhere taking the top spot

Very remarkable that switzerland had 3 different companies in the top 10 at 3 different, coming from such a small country and market (9mil population only!)

Watched this in my economics class, we were cheering for America like it was a horse race

Once upon a time, Japanese companies almost had occupied the whole list. I see why the US government waged the trade war against Japan at the time.

Japan’s golden time: 1985-1990 😮

This is why USA bashed Japan

Many learnings to be taken from this. Innovation is key. Kodax being a good example. And even if good companies loose value they might come back stronger. Some names fall down and come back again. GDP growth is essential for stock market growth e.g. Japan

Once again, W 🇺🇸

Fascinating how no non-petro resource or mining stocks feature, except for the Aussie BHP's brief blip on the charts over the 5 decades represented.

mooi man.

1:40 THAT is what I remember and why back then there was so much animosity toward Japanese companies at the time.

how do you create this dynamic chart?

二回も原爆落とされて、空襲受けまくって焼け野原になった島国が 世界トップになったことあるのやべえな

I am Taiwanese. I am proud of TSMC.