The Geography of the World’s 50 Top Billionaires

The business world has undergone considerable change in the last two decades.

While some fortunes are always reliably passed on to their respective heirs and heiresses, there are also entirely new industries that rise out of nowhere to shape the landscape of global wealth.

As the wealth landscape shifts, so does its geographical distribution.

The 2019 List of Billionaires

Today’s chart uses data from the most recent edition of the Forbes Billionaires List to map the distribution of the world’s richest people, and then compare that to data from 20 years prior.

We’ll start here by looking at the most recent data from 2019:

The most recent billionaires list features Jeff Bezos at the top with $131 billion, although it’s likely his recent divorce announcement will provide an upcoming shakeup to the Bezos Empire.

Bezos is just one of 21 Americans that find themselves in the top 50 list, which means that 42% of the world’s top billionaires hail from the United States.

Billionaire Geography Over Time

If we compare the top 50 list to that from 1999, it’s interesting to see what has changed over time in terms of geographical distribution.

Here’s the distribution of top countries on both lists, compared:

In the last 20 years, Russia and China have stockpiled the most top billionaires, adding five and four to the top 50 list respectively. The United States added three, going from 18 to 21 billionaires over the timeframe.

On the other end of the spectrum, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland have lost the most billionaires from the top 50 ranking.

40 Stock Market Terms That Every Beginner Should Know

Understanding the stock market can be a daunting task for any new investor.

Not only are there many concepts and technical terms to decipher, but nearly everybody will try to give you conflicting pieces of advice.

For example, if a stock in your portfolio falls in price, should you be accumulating additional shares at a lower price or should you be strategically cutting your losses?

Some experts will tell you one thing, while others will tell you precisely the opposite.

A Place to Start: Terminology

Before you drift into the many debates that the investing pundits are weighing in on, perhaps the most proactive step for a beginner is to simply learn to talk the same language as the pros.

Today’s infographic comes to us from StocksToTrade.com, and it covers the most important stock market terms that every new investor should know and understand. It’s enough to get any beginner on the same playing field, so they can start toying with the more nuanced or complex concepts in the investing universe.

While we don’t agree with the exact definitions of all of the terms, the list is adequate enough to get any new investor off the ground. It covers basic order terms like “bid”, “ask”, and “volume”, but it also goes into concepts like “authorized shares”, “secondary offerings”, “yield”, and a security’s “moving average”.

What’s Next?

Already got a handle on 40 of the most important stock market terms?

Visual Capitalist has a ton of other powerful visual resources for new investors, or anyone else hungry to learn about how markets work:

• Learn how to read stock charts
• Visualize the power of compound interest
• See this simple introduction to investing we published
• See how elite growth investors pick stocks
• Learn about the basics of ETFs and mutual funds, and even the differences between them
• Learn about the basics of creating a stock portfolio
• See how stock market indices work
• Understand 12 types of technical indicators for investing
• See how Warren Buffett’s brain works

Crush the above resources, and you’ll be market savvy in no time!