BESSEMBINDER 2026 · 1926—2025 — Extreme Wealth Concentration: Fifty Years of Wealth Generated by 46 Firms
Secular Wealth Concentration — The mathematical power-law distribution governing shareholder value creation across a century of public US capital markets.
The plate
Ranked by net wealth creation over Treasury bills across 29,081 CRSP companies: 2 firms drove the top 10%, 46 drove half, and just 1,082 accounted for the entire $90.96 trillion gain. Wealth generation is concentrated in a tiny sliver of super-winners.
What this page answers
This static page is built to answer searches for BESSEMBINDER 2026 · 1926—2025. It summarizes the live dataset behind the Extreme Wealth Concentration: Fifty Years of Wealth Generated by 46 Firms panel and links to the full interactive chart.
Ranked by net wealth creation over Treasury bills across 29,081 CRSP companies: 2 firms drove the top 10%, 46 drove half, and just 1,082 accounted for the entire $90.96 trillion gain. Wealth generation is concentrated in a tiny sliver of super-winners. The data is refreshed by the History of Market pipeline and published as a stable JSON endpoint for research, citation, and AI-agent use.
Data & Source
GET /api/static/bessembinder-2026.json — Canonical dataset endpoint.
Exchange closing prices · Company filings · Robert Shiller · FRED · NBER.
FAQ
Where does this data come from?
History of Market combines public market and macro datasets — exchange closing prices, company filings, Robert Shiller, FRED, NBER, and the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook (Dimson–Marsh–Staunton). The exact endpoint for this panel is linked below.
How often is it updated?
Daily-tier datasets refresh after the U.S. market close, with a broader weekly refresh each weekend. The timestamp shown on this page comes from the JSON payload.
Can I use the data?
Yes, for research and education with attribution to History of Market. Upstream data sources retain their own terms.