The Global 30

The Global 30 are the biggest companies in the world by market cap.  These are all American companies or listed on the NYSE.  There are some other large companies from China and Switzerland that could be listed, but they aren't on the NYSE.  I find this list interesting for reasons I will explain below.  This is the market cap of the companies as of 12/31/13.

Symbol	Company	Market Cap
AAPL	Apple Inc	504,750
XOM	Exxon Mobil	439,622
GOOG	Google	374,418
MSFT	Microsoft	312,374
BRK-A	Berkshire Hathaway	293,535
GE	General Electric	283,664
JNJ	Johnson and Johnson	258,284
WMT	Wal-Mart	254,956
CVX	Chevron	239,827
WFC	Wells Fargo	239,258
RDS-B	Royal Dutch Shell	235,845
PG	Proctor Gamble	221,435
HSBC	HSBC Holdings	220,520
JPM	JP Morgan Chase	219,885
CHL	China Mobile Ltd	210,206
IBM	IBM	204,451
PTR	Petrochina	204,116
PFE	Pfizer	198,482
NVS	Novartis	196,127
TM	Toyota Motor Co	192,634
VOD	Vodafone	191,047
T	ATT	185,293
KO	Coca Cola	182,590
AMZN	Amazon	182,526
BHP	BHP Billiton Ltd	181,412
ORCL	Oracle	173,700
BUD	Anheuser-Busch	170,336
BAC	Bank of America	166,132
C	Citigroup	157,893
BP	BP plc	152,635
	Total	7,047,954

These companies make up almost half of the market cap of the NYSE, the largest stock exchange in the world. (Note that Microsoft is listed on NASDAQ not the NYSE).  (See also an earlier post showing a total cap of 6,919,352).

I have been following an expanded definition of money supply, which includes US government debt.  Could stocks also fit into an expanded definition of money?  I think that they could for several reasons.  First, they are highly liquid and very easy to sell.  Instead of keeping money in your bank account you might decide to buy stocks instead.  And when the prices go up, people think they are wealthier and will spend more.  Second, for the larger companies at least, they can treat their stock as money in paying employees or buying up competitors. Third, a lot of the newly created money goes into the stock market.

Ok, but why focus on just these companies and not every stock listed?  Primarily because it is hard to get the data.  But also because there is something interesting about a huge company like Apple that is bigger than most countries.

So I think I may publish stats that includes this in the total.  Note that the total public government debt of 12.3 trillion dwarfs this number.

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Update:
Facebook (FB) has 2450 M shares outstanding.  As of 12/31/13, it had a share price of 54.65, giving this a market cap of $133,893 million.

Removing PetroChina (PTR) and adding FaceBook, gives this a revised value of 6,977,731.

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Update 2:
I'm thinking about adding 3 more companies to the list: Comcast (CMCSA), Verizon (VZ), and Merck (MRK).  I am going to hold off for now until their market cap breaks $150B.  Facebook is below $150B, but skyrocketing.