Markets

The World’s Most Powerful Reserve Currencies

Published

3 years ago

October 7, 2019

Jeff Desjardins

The World's Most Powerful Reserve Currencies

The World’s Most Powerful Reserve Currencies

When we think of network effects, we’re usually thinking of them in the context of technology and Metcalfe’s Law.

Metcalfe’s Law states that the more users that a network has, the more valuable it is to those users. It’s a powerful idea that is exploited by companies like LinkedIn, Airbnb, or Uber — all companies that provide a more beneficial service as their networks gain more nodes.

But network effects don’t apply just to technology and related fields.

In the financial sector, for example, stock exchanges grow in utility when they have more buyers, sellers, and volume. Likewise, in international finance, a currency can become increasingly entrenched when it’s accepted, used, and trusted all over the world.

What’s a Reserve Currency?

Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it breaks down foreign reserves held by countries — but what is a reserve currency, anyways?

In essence, reserve currencies (i.e. U.S. dollar, pound sterling, euro, etc.) are held on to by central banks for the following major reasons:

To maintain a stable exchange rate for the domestic currency
To ensure liquidity in the case of an economic or political crisis
To provide confidence to international buyers and foreign investors
To fulfill international obligations, such as paying down debt
To diversify central bank portfolios, reducing overall risk

Not surprisingly, central banks benefit the most from stockpiling widely-held reserve currencies such as the U.S. dollar or the euro.

Because these currencies are accepted almost everywhere, they provide third-parties with extra confidence and perceived liquidity. This is a network effect that snowballs from the growing use of a particular reserve currency over others.

Reserve Currencies Over Time

Here is how the usage of reserve currencies has evolved over the last 15 years:

Currency composition of official foreign exchange reserves (2004-2019)
	🇺🇸 U.S. Dollar	🇪🇺 Euro	🇯🇵 Japanese Yen	🇬🇧 Pound Sterling	🌐 Other
2004	65.5%	24.7%	4.3%	3.5%	2.0%
2009	62.1%	27.7%	2.9%	4.3%	3.0%
2014	65.1%	21.2%	3.5%	3.7%	6.5%
2019	61.8%	20.2%	5.3%	4.5%	8.2%

Over this timeframe, there have been small ups and downs in most reserve currencies.

Today, the U.S. dollar is the world’s most powerful reserve currency, making up over 61% of foreign reserves. The dollar gets an extensive network effect from its use abroad, and this translates into several advantages for the multi-trillion dollar U.S. economy.

The euro, yen, and pound sterling are the other mainstay reserve currencies, adding up to roughly 30% of foreign reserves.

Finally, the most peculiar data series above is “Other”, which grew from 2.0% to 8.4% of worldwide foreign reserves over the last 15 years. This bucket includes the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, the Swiss franc, and the Chinese renminbi.

Accepted Everywhere?

There have been rumblings in the media for decades now about the rise of the Chinese renminbi as a potential new challenger on the reserve currency front.

While there are still big structural problems that will prevent this from happening as fast as some may expect, the currency is still on the rise internationally.

What will the composition of global foreign reserves look like in another 15 years?

Related Topics:money central banks trade featured reserve currencies

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Technology

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Here’s what investors need to know about the future of cybersecurity.

Written By

Marcus Lu

Graphics & Design

Sam Parker

Published August 11, 2022 • Updated August 11, 2022 •

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

In 2020, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $945 billion, according to McAfee.

It’s likely even higher today, as multiple sources have recorded an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks during the pandemic.

In this infographic from Global X ETFs, we highlight three major trends that are shaping the future of the cybersecurity industry that investors need to know.

Trend 1: Increasing Costs

Research from IBM determined that the average data breach cost businesses $4.2 million in 2021, up from $3.6 million in 2017. The following table breaks this figure into four components:

Cost Component	Value ($)
Cost of lost business	$1.6M
Detection and escalation	$1.2M
Post breach response	$1.1M
Notification	$0.3M
Total	$4.2M

The greatest cost of a data breach is lost business, which results from system downtimes, reputational losses, and lost customers. Second is detection and escalation, including investigative activities, audit services, and communications to stakeholders.

Post breach response includes costs such as legal expenditures, issuing new accounts or credit cards (in the case of financial institutions), and other monitoring services. Lastly, notification refers to the cost of notifying regulators, stakeholders, and other third parties.

To stay ahead of these rising costs, businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity. For example, Microsoft announced in September 2021 that it would quadruple its cybersecurity investments to $20 billion over the next five years.

Trend 2: Remote Work Opens New Vulnerabilities

According to IBM, companies that rely more on remote work experience greater losses from data breaches. For companies where 81 to 100% of employees were remote, the average cost of a data breach was $5.5 million (2021). This dropped to $3.7 million for companies that had under 10% of employees working from home.

A major reason for this gap is that work-from-home setups are typically less secure. Phishing attacks surged in 2021, taking advantage of the fact that many employees access corporate systems through their personal devices.

Type of Attack	Number of attacks in 2020	Number of attacks in 2021	Growth (%)
Spam phishing	1.5M	10.1M	+573%
Credential phishing	5.5M	6.2M	+13%

As detected by Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security.

Spam phishing refers to “fake” emails that trick users by impersonating company management. They can include malicious links that download ransomware onto the users device. Credential phishing is similar in concept, though the goal is to steal a person’s account credentials.

A tactic you may have seen before is the Amazon scam, where senders impersonate Amazon and convince users to update their payment methods. This strategy could also be used to gain access to a company’s internal systems.

Trend 3: AI Can Reduce the Cost of a Data Breach

AI-based cybersecurity can detect and respond to cyberattacks without any human intervention. When fully deployed, IBM measured a 20% reduction in the time it takes to identify and contain a breach. It also resulted in cost savings upwards of 60%.

A prominent user of AI-based cybersecurity is Google, which uses machine learning to detect phishing attacks within Gmail.

Machine learning helps Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in your inbox with over 99.9% accuracy. This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam.
– Andy Wen, Google

As cybercrime escalates, Acumen Research and Consulting believes the market for AI-based security solutions will reach $134 billion by 2030, up from $15 billion in 2021.

Introducing the Global X Cybersecurity ETF

The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (Ticker: BUG) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. See below for industry and country-level breakdowns, as of June 2022.

Sector (By security type)	Weight
Cloud	28.0%
Network	25.1%
Identity	17.7%
Internet	15.0%
Endpoint	12.8%

Country	Weight
🇺🇸 U.S.	71.6%
🇮🇱 Israel	13.2%
🇬🇧 UK	8.2%
🇯🇵 Japan	5.5%
🇰🇷 South Korea	0.9%
🇨🇦 Canada	0.6%

Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

Investors can use this passively managed solution to gain exposure to the rising adoption of cybersecurity technologies.

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Markets

Visualizing Major Layoffs At U.S. Corporations

This infographic highlights the accelerating pace of layoffs so far in 2022, as businesses cut costs ahead of a potential recession.

Published

1 week ago

August 9, 2022

Marcus Lu

Visualizing Major Layoffs at U.S. Corporations

Hiring freezes and layoffs are becoming more common in 2022, as U.S. businesses look to slash costs ahead of a possible recession.

Understandably, this has a lot of people worried. In June 2022, Insight Global found that 78% of American workers fear they will lose their job in the next recession. Additionally, 56% said they aren’t financially prepared, and 54% said they would take a pay cut to avoid being laid off.

In this infographic, we’ve visualized major layoffs announced in 2022 by publicly-traded U.S. corporations.

Note: Due to gaps in reporting, as well as the very large number of U.S. corporations, this list may not be comprehensive.

An Emerging Trend

Layoffs have surged considerably since April of this year. See the table below for high-profile instances of mass layoffs.

Company	Industry	Layoffs (#)	Month
Peloton	Consumer Discretionary	2,800	February
Funko	Consumer Discretionary	258	April
Robinhood	Financial Services	~400	April
Nektar Therapeutics	Biotechnology	500	April
Carvana	Automotive	2,500	May
Doma	Financial Services	310	May
JP Morgan Chase & Co.	Financial Services	~500	June
Tesla	Automotive	200	June
Coinbase	Financial Services	1,100	June
Netflix	Technology	300	June
CVS Health	Pharmaceutical	208	June
StartTek	Technology	472	June
Ford	Automotive	8,000	July
Rivian	Automotive	840	July
Peloton	Consumer Discretionary	2,000	July
LoanDepot	Financial Services	2,000	July
Invitae	Biotechnology	1,000	July
Lyft	Technology	60	July
Meta	Technology	350	July
Twitter	Technology	<30	July
Vimeo	Technology	72	July
Robinhood	Financial Services	~795	August

Here’s a brief rundown of these layoffs, sorted by industry.

Automotive

Ford has announced the biggest round of layoffs this year, totalling roughly 8,000 salaried employees. Many of these jobs are in Ford’s legacy combustion engine business. According to CEO Jim Farley, these cuts are necessary to fund the company’s transition to EVs.

We absolutely have too many people in some places, no doubt about it.
– Jim Farley, CEO, Ford

Speaking of EVs, Rivian laid off 840 employees in July, amounting to 6% of its total workforce. The EV startup pointed to inflation, rising interest rates, and increasing commodity prices as factors. The firm’s more established competitor, Tesla, cut 200 jobs from its autopilot division in the month prior.

Last but not least is online used car retailer, Carvana, which cut 2,500 jobs in May. The company experienced rapid growth during the pandemic, but has since fallen out of grace. Year-to-date, the company’s shares are down more than 80%.

Financial Services

Fearing an impending recession, Coinbase has shed 1,100 employees, or 18% of its total workforce. Interestingly, Coinbase does not have a physical headquarters, meaning the entire company operates remotely.

A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period. In past crypto winters, trading revenue declined significantly.
Brian Armstrong, CEO, Coinbase

Around the same time, JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced it would fire hundreds of home-lending employees. While an exact number isn’t available, we’ve estimated this to be around 500 jobs, based on the original Bloomberg article. Wells Fargo, another major U.S. bank, has also cut 197 jobs from its home mortgage division.

The primary reason for these cuts is rising mortgage rates, which are negatively impacting the demand for homes.

Technology

Within tech, Meta and Twitter are two of the most high profile companies to begin making layoffs. In Meta’s case, 350 custodial staff have been let go due to reduced usage of the company’s offices.

Many more cuts are expected, however, as Facebook recently reported its first revenue decline in 10 years. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear he expects the company to do more with fewer resources, and managers have been encouraged to report “low performers” for “failing the company”.

Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.
– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta

Also in July, Twitter laid off 30% of its talent acquisition team. An exact number was not available, but the team was estimated to have less than 100 employees. The company has also enacted a hiring freeze as it stumbles through a botched acquisition by Elon Musk.

More Layoffs to Come…

Layoffs are expected to continue throughout the rest of this year, as metrics like consumer sentiment enter a decline. Rising interest rates, which make it more expensive for businesses to borrow money, are also having a negative impact on growth.

In fact just a few days ago, trading platform Robinhood announced it was letting go 23% of its staff. After accounting for its previous layoffs in April (9% of the workforce), it’s fair to estimate that this latest round will impact nearly 800 people.