To hell with Obama –Â be un-American. I am! Our country has a great future. But it’s too popular. The U.S. of A. is 23% of global GDP yet sports 28 of the world’s 50 biggest stocks. American markets have outpaced foreign ones for seven years. These things fluctuate.
Yes, America has inherent advantages that few see. When I was a young man in the 1970s, tech firms were scattered across the developed world. Since then America has come to dominate tech, almost totally.
The largest official non-U.S. tech stock is China’s Tencent Holdings (HKSE:00700, Financial), which really isn’t a tech outfit at all but a multi-industry conglomerate. You have to run down through seven U.S. firms to find another foreign tech firm, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM, Financial), recommended July 21). Next is Germany’s SAP (SAP, Financial) at $93 billion in market cap, followed by another free fall all the way to China’s Baidu (BIDU, Financial) at $ 63 billion –Â and then, again, to Ireland’s Accenture (ACN, Financial) at $54 billion, which isn’t entirely a tech firm, either. The vacuum continues down from there.
This offers American companies a great long-term adjacency –Â effect advantage over foreign firms –Â one techie at a cocktail party casually describes what her firm is cooking, and the listening consumer products guy gloms an idea. Yankee ingenuity continues.
