Goldman Sachs' plan for the UK

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The markets, year-to-date

• S&P 500: 5,580.94 ⬇️ -5.11%

• FTSE 100: 8,658.85 ⬆️ 4.83%

• Bitcoin: $83,825.10 ⬇️ -10.31%

• GBP to USD: $1.2938 ⬆️ 3.36%

• GBP to EUR: €1.1957 ⬇️ -1.12%

  (As of Friday market close.)

Goldman Sachs’ big idea for the UK

Historically, the UK stock market has always been slightly bigger — as a proportion of GDP — to the US stock market, according to a new piece of research from Goldman Sachs analysts Sharon Bell, Peter Oppenheimer, Lilia Peytavin, and Guillaume Jaisson.

That’s a surprising fact, given Americans’ obsession with stocks and Britons’ historic disinterest in investing.

The UK lost its (proportional) edge sometime around 2013, when the US stock market began climbing and climbing and climbing, while the UK index just sat there, going nowhere. US stocks are now worth 191% of US GDP; UK stocks are now worth only 92% of UK GDP.

There are lots of reasons for this, of course. A big one is that the US market has m…