Why aren’t firms floating?

In 1996, there were more than 7,300 companies listed on the US stockmarket. John Stepek asks why today there are fewer than 3,700.

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Enticing, but most investors can't climb on
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In 1996, there were more than 7,300 companies listed on the US stockmarket. Guess how many there are now? You might imagine that the number is a lot higher. After all, America is the home of shareholder capitalism. You'd be wrong. That year was the peak. The number of US-listed companies has been falling for the past 20 years. There are just under 3,700 (although their combined market capitalisation has more than doubled).

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.