Bigger securities markets carried uneven financing activity
Global securities markets expanded in 2025, increasing the amount of debt outstanding and the value of investors’ equity holdings. Companies’ financing activity took different directions across bonds and follow-on share sales. SIFMA’s 2026 SIFMA Fact Book puts global fixed-income debt outstanding at $160.7 trillion in 2025, up 10.6% year over year. That expansion increased the stock of debt obligations connecting issuers to investors, with new borrowing representing a separate measure of market activity.
The report estimates global long-term fixed-income issuance at $29.9 trillion in 2025, an increase of 6.3%. Outstanding debt measures obligations that remain in place; issuance measures securities sold during a period. The distinction matters when assessing the capacity of markets to finance enterprises. A larger outstanding balance establishes the scale of existing obligations. Issuance records activity through which issuers obtain financing, without establishing how much their total debt increased.
Those measures belong to different stages of the same financing process. In primary markets, issuers sell new securities and receive funds from investors seeking returns. In secondary markets, investors buy and sell securities already issued. Companies can also borrow from banks. Each route connects financing needs with available funds, though trading an existing security transfers ownership rather than supplying fresh proceeds to its issuer.
Equities make the distinction between market size and fundraising particularly clear. The report places global equity market capitalization at $157.8 trillion in 2025, up 18.9% year over year. Market capitalization measures the aggregate value of equity securities. Its increase cannot be read as an equivalent amount of money raised by companies, because the value of outstanding shares and the proceeds from new share sales measure different things.
The report records a decline in follow-on offerings in 2025, with proceeds totaling $154.6 billion, down 8.9% year over year. These offerings involve additional securities sold by issuers already in the market. Their contraction establishes a narrower result than the growth in global equity capitalization: less financing through the measured follow-on channel. Corporate bond issuance increased 12.5% year over year to $2.2 trillion in 2025. Together, these financing measures establish that issuance did not expand uniformly across the channels covered.
The terminology matters here. Follow-ons are also called secondary offerings, yet they belong to the fundraising side of the discussion. Secondary-market trading concerns securities that investors already hold. Treating the two as interchangeable would blur the difference between an issuer obtaining capital and an investor changing a position.
Foreign investors’ gross activity in U.S. securities reached $176.3 trillion in 2025, rising 31.0% year over year, the report estimates. The gross measure captures the scale of transactions. It does not establish the net amount of foreign money entering U.S. securities or the amount reaching issuers. Large purchases and sales can therefore be relevant to market activity without providing a direct measure of corporate financing.
Longer comparisons also require consistent coverage. The report identifies a break beginning in February 2023 in cross-border purchase and sale data for long-term securities following reporting changes. Comparisons spanning that boundary must account for the change in the series. The measured activity and the reporting framework both determine what a historical comparison can support.
On the investor side, the report puts U.S. retirement assets at $53.6 trillion in 2025, up 8.4% year over year. Retirement assets add an institutional dimension to the expansion: market scale concerns the pools of savings held for future needs as well as securities issued and traded. Across the measures presented, the structural change was an enlargement of outstanding debt, equity value and retirement assets, accompanied by uneven fundraising. A larger securities market gives investors more value to hold and trade; enterprises obtain financing through the specific channels in which new capital is actually raised.