Developed market


In investing, a developed market is a country that is most developed in terms of its economy and capital markets. The country must be high income, but this also includes openness to foreign ownership, ease of capital movement, and efficiency of market institutions. This term is contrasted with developing market.

FTSE Group list

, a provider of economic and financial data, assigns the market status of countries as Developed, Advanced Emerging, Secondary Emerging or Frontier on the basis of their economic size, wealth, quality of markets, depth of markets, breadth of markets.
From 26 September 2019, FTSE Group classifies 26 countries as developed markets:

FTSE criteria

Developed countries all have met criteria under the following categories:
  1. They are high income economies
  2. # Formal stock market regulatory authorities actively monitor market
  3. # Fair and non-prejudicial treatment of minority shareholders
  4. # Non or selective incidence of foreign ownership restrictions
  5. # No objections or significant restrictions or penalties applied on the repatriation of capital
  6. # Free and well-developed equity market
  7. # Free and well-developed foreign exchange market
  8. # Non or simple registration process for foreign investors
  9. Custody and Settlement
  10. # Settlement - Rare incidence of failed trades
  11. # Custody-Sufficient competition to ensure high quality custodian services
  12. # Clearing & settlement - T +3 or shorter, T+7 or shorter for Frontier
  13. # Stock Lending is permitted
  14. # Settlement - Free delivery available
  15. # Custody - Omnibus account facilities available to international investors
  16. Dealing Landscape
  17. # Brokerage - Sufficient competition to ensure high quality broker services
  18. # Liquidity - Sufficient broad market liquidity to support sizeable global investment
  19. # Transaction costs - implicit and explicit costs to be reasonable and competitive
  20. # Short sales permitted
  21. # Off-exchange transactions permitted
  22. # Efficient trading mechanism
  23. # Transparency - market depth information / visibility and timely trade reporting process
  24. Derivatives
  25. # Developed derivatives markets
  26. Size of Market
  27. # Market Capitalisation
  28. # Total Number of Listed Companies

    MSCI list

As of June 2019, MSCI classified the following 25 countries as developed markets:
According to MSCI Global investable Market Indexes Methodology - November 2019, Cyprus and Luxembourg, "are part of the developed market universe", but "given their modest size, these markets are not included in the MSCI World index".

S&P list

As of 24 June 2019, Standard and Poor's classifies the following 25 countries as developed markets:

STOXX list

As of 23 September 2019, STOXX classifies the following 25 countries as developed markets:

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