international stock allocation

[Islander]

According to BeSpoke Investment Group, the US stock market capitalization as a percentage of world market capitalization is 32.7%
Im surprised it's this low. Had assumed it to be about 45%.

Does this suggest we revisit the International stock allocation guideline ie., 20% to 40% ?

[shawcroft]

From recent posts, I had also thought the US was 45% and the international was (overall) 55%. I'm interested in what research methods were used to come to the 32.7% figure.
Any references on that in the article?
Shawcroft

[ftobin]

According to BeSpoke Investment Group, the US stock market capitalization as a percentage of world market capitalization is 32.7%

FTSE or MSCI indexes say 45% is US currently. The easy way to tell is to look at the breakdown of the Vanguard Total World Fund.

[wesleymouch]

I have roughly half in US and half in International. This helps cushion against dollar devaluation also.

[nisiprius]

Got a link to BeSpoke Investment Group's paper or announcement? I wonder if they've invented some creative new way to measure market cap. (I'm thinking it might be one of these deals I've seen seeing recently, where they are measuring, not the actual market cap of the actual markets, but the theoretical market cap if companies that don't issue stock or that can't be invested in were part of some fantasy market...)

Added:

Google found me this, but they don't really give their data or methodology, only that they are "using Bloomberg data."

[BillyG]

This is a good Vanguard study on the subject:
https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/icriecr.pdf

Billy

[Islander]

The article can be found on their web site under January 2013 archives.

To avoid quibbling over methodology, I'll rephrase my question as follows: If in fact US stock market capitalization is now about 1/3 the world
market capitalization, should we revisit the international stock allocation guideline ie., 20% - 40% ?