External Wealth of Nations 2025 update: AI stock prices and global imbalances

Highlights from the year-end 2025 update of the External Wealth of Nations database:

• Global current account imbalances in 2025 widened modestly, remaining well above their pre-COVID levels, albeit below their pre-global financial crisis peaks. Global creditor and debtor positions scaled by world GDP remained close to all-time highs. Clearly external imbalances are not going away anytime soon.
• Global stock prices continued to rise in 2025 (over 20% in USD terms), this time more rapidly outside the U.S. than in the U.S., and the dollar weakened by about 7% in nominal effective terms. Valuation changes triggered by these asset price changes boosted the creditor positions of countries with large net holdings of portfolio equity (such as Norway and Middle Eastern oil exporters) and increased the value of U.S. assets denominated in foreign currency, generating positive valuation gains for the United States.
• The U.S. net debtor position accounts for the lion’s share of global net external liabilities. While rising equity valuations in recent years have boosted U.S. liabilities, two-thirds of U.S. net liabilities are in bonds and other debt instruments. Thanks to favorable valuation changes, the U.S. net international investment position (NIIP) excluding gold in 2025 worsened relative to 2024 by only $200 billion, to around $23 trillion.
• Four groups of creditors—advanced central and northern Europe, advanced Asia, China, and oil exporters—account for the lion’s share of net creditor positions. Despite projections of persistent U.S. current account deficits, 2026 is likely to see a broad stabilization of the U.S. net debtor position in relation to U.S. and world GDP, while large projected current account surpluses for advanced Asia, advanced Europe, and China should lead to increased creditor positions in counterpart economies—with the exception of oil exporters, whose current account surpluses are smaller.
• Korea, the Netherlands, and Taiwan continue to be net creditors, but the size of their positive NIIP has been eroded by the increasing prices of equities in their major AI-related companies (Samsung and SK Hynix for Korea, ASML for the Netherlands, and TSMC for Taiwan). Of course, these rising equity valuations have also contributed to boosting domestic residents’ wealth in all these countries.

Aggregate current account and net IIP trends

Global current account balances, as well as global creditor and debtor positions, remained broadly at their 2024 levels when scaled by world GDP. The U.S. current account deficit (dark blue bar) accounted for the lion’s share of global deficits, while surpluses were concentrated in China (including Hong Kong and Macau—orange bar) and two advanced economies groups: advanced Asia (light brown bar), comprising Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, and countries in central and northern Europe, including Denmark, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland (gray bar).

The same groups and individual countries account for the lion’s share of global creditor and debtor positions, with the addition of emerging market oil exporters (light blue bar) among the large creditor groups. Excluding China and major oil exporters, emerging markets and developing economies are net external debtors (red bars). The “other advanced economies” group includes net debtor countries such as France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.

Valuation changes

Changes in global creditor and debtor positions are driven by international borrowing and lending, reflected in current account balances, and by changes in the valuation of external assets and liabilities driven by fluctuations in asset prices and exchange rates. Between end-2024 and end-2025, global stock prices in U.S. dollars rose by over 20%, with U.S. price increases trailing those in the aggregate of other major markets. These developments strengthened the external positions of countries with large net portfolio equity assets, such as those with large sovereign funds (such as Norway and Middle Eastern oil exporters) and increased the liability positions of large recipients of foreign investment in equities. Other factors were at play as well. Those included the depreciation of the U.S. dollar (over 7% in nominal effective terms for the broad dollar index) and the particularly large increase in valuation for companies producing key components for AI investment. We examine each of these in turn.

United States and its creditors

The depreciation of the dollar during 2025 increased the value of foreign-currency-denominated assets held by U.S. residents, more than reversing the impact of U.S. dollar appreciation in the previous year. These valuation gains offset most of the U.S. substantial net borrowing from abroad during 2025 (over $1.2 trillion); the increase in the U.S. net debtor position between end-2024 and end-2025, excluding gold holdings, was thus only around $200 billion, and the debtor position as a share of GDP improved by 3 percentage points. Including gold holdings, the net debtor position actually improved in absolute terms, buoyed by the boom in gold prices. After substantial downward revisions to market-value estimates of FDI positions in the U.S., the net IIP at end-2025 was at around -$23 trillion (75% of GDP) excluding gold, and around -$21.9 trillion (71% of GDP) including gold holdings.

In comparison, the net creditor positions of advanced Europe, advanced Asia, greater China, and oil exporters at the end of 2025 were $9 trillion, $6.8 trillion, $6.5 trillion, and $6.8 trillion respectively.

Korea, Netherlands, and Taiwan

These economies, all with sizable net creditor positions in relation to their GDP, all experienced a double-digit decline in their creditor positions, despite running large current account surpluses (20% of GDP in Taiwan, 6.5% in Korea, and 7.5% in the Netherlands). The decline was caused by a dramatic increase in their portfolio equity liabilities, as the valuation of companies that play a pivotal role in AI-related investment skyrocketed: Samsung and SK Hynix for Korea, ASML for the Netherlands, and TSMC for Taiwan. The chart displays the change in the net IIP scaled by GDP between 2024 and 2025 (blue bar) alongside the change in the net portfolio equity position (orange bar), thereby controlling for the impact of the global rise in stock prices on the asset side as well.

Clearly a worsening in the net IIP caused by rising valuations of domestic firms has to be assessed very differently from a deterioration due to an accumulation of debt liabilities, for instance, through persistent debt-financed current account deficits. Indeed, higher equity prices for domestic firms raise domestic wealth, as domestic shareholders benefit from rising valuations, even though part of the valuation gains also accrue to foreign investors, particularly for firms held in global portfolios.