Much as the geopolitical narrative unavoidably turns on the vagaries of Donald Trump’s mercurial policymaking, the fate of the market narrative invariably hinges on the figurative and literal fortunes of corporate America.

In other words: The best efforts of China and friends to foster a new multipolarity aside, a lot still depends on the US and everything to do with it.

A testament to that is the interesting juxtaposition between global shares’ outperformance versus US equities in 2025 and the fact that US shares now comprise nearly three-quarters of overall market cap.

The figure above shows you the scope of the drag for US stocks, which began in and around “Liberation Day.”

“For a year that was very much focused on US government policy and how US stocks dominate the AI story, it was non-US equity markets that generated the best returns in 2025,” SocGen’s Andrew Lapthorne wrote Friday, adding that although the dollar’s worst year in eight “contributed to this narrative, the Eurozone, Japan, UK and emerging markets were all ahead of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq even in local currency terms.” Indeed, 2025’s ex-US outperformance was the largest since 1993, he marveled.

And yet, as the figures below remind you, it’s all about US equities, and you can take “all” almost literally.

The figure on the left illustrates US dominance — it’s 72% of market cap, up from just 30% in the late 1980s. The figure on the right shows you relative size at the individual stock level.

“The average US stock is almost four times bigger than the average non-US stock,” Lapthorne went on. “What this means in practice is that to get noticed in terms of impact on the overall benchmark, assuming a passive weight, the non-US stock must deliver exceptional performance.”