Ocorian commissioned 5iresearch to produce the Global Asset Monitor which considers eight main asset classes that make up the vast bulk of the world’s assets. Four of these are in public markets, namely listed equities and three categories of listed bonds (corporate, sovereign, and other which include municipal and agency bonds). The other four are in private markets, namely funds investing in private equity, private debt, infrastructure and real estate. We recognise there are other kinds of assets, such as residential and commercial property, commodities, art and so on. But we have chosen ours to represent the easily investable universe: investors can buy public assets on exchanges and they can participate in private markets via funds.
Basic private market data is sourced from Preqin unless otherwise stated, but since this data is only available infrequently and with considerable time lags, we have modelled an up-to-date valuation for private assets by considering the change in value of relevant public markets and other publicly available data and reporting on private assets since the last Preqin update was released and adjusting the values accordingly. These ‘nowcasts’ are intended only to provide a guide to recent developments.
Public market data is sourced mainly from Factset. Data was captured in September 2026. The equities time series looks at the largest 2,250 companies in the world today and how their market capitalisations have evolved over time. These companies represent 85% of global market capitalisation so we have scaled up by the remaining 15% to show the full global equity market value in each year. To measure the size of the bond markets we have considered both the market value and the face value in each country (and sector in the case of corporate bonds) each year - sourced from Factset. Where data limitations impact the sovereign results, we have derived our figures by using general government debt levels as a proxy for the bond market.
All data is converted to USD at prevailing spot rates. Currency fluctuations may therefore make an impact in the short term, but over the long-term the effect of exchange rates tends to even out almost entirely at the global level. No account has been taken of inflation.