The World Cup’s final three, head to head

Spain is through to the World Cup final after overcoming France, while England and Argentina are still to decide who will meet them. With only three teams still in contention, the World Cup is nearing its conclusion, but we’ve drawn up another contest.

We’ve taken the remaining nations off the pitch and put their sharemarkets head to head in three measures: market muscle, star players and what moves the market. The result is not a prediction of who will lift the trophy, but a different way to compare the countries still standing.

First, we look at the size of each benchmark, where there is a clear winner. We then compare the sectors and companies that shape each index, before examining the economic forces currently driving performance. The aim is not to rank the markets as investments, but to show how differently they are built and what can influence their returns.

England has no separate sharemarket benchmark, with the UK-wide FTSE 100 as the closest available stand-in. It represents companies listed across the United Kingdom, not England alone. At A$4.9 trillion, it still wins the opening contest comfortably. Spain’s IBEX 35 follows at A$3.8 trillion, while Argentina’s S&P Merval trails at about A$26 billion. The gap is significant: the FTSE 100 is more than 160 times the size of Argentina’s domestic market.

But size alone doesn’t tell us what sits inside each market. The FTSE 100 is a broad portfolio of multinationals whereas Spain’s market combines banks and utilities with global companies such as Inditex and Iberdrola², and Argentina’s smaller index is built around energy, banks, utilities and materials. The first round has a clear winner, but not a complete story.³

England may lead on size, but its star players are spread across a broad mix of global sectors. HSBC and Barclays bring banking weight, Shell and BP add energy, AstraZeneca anchors health care and Unilever supplies consumer staples. This gives the index exposure to several established, cash-generative industries, although it has far less technology exposure than many other major global benchmarks.⁴

For those interested in the UK market, the F100 FTSE 100 ETF brings the index’s 100 largest London-listed companies together in a single ASX trade. It aims to track the performance of the FTSE 100 Index before fees and expenses.

Spain’s IBEX 35 has a more concentrated sector mix, with banks and utilities carrying considerable weight. Santander and BBVA provide significant financial exposure, Iberdrola brings renewable energy and electricity networks, while Inditex adds a global consumer business through brands including Zara. The result is an index shaped heavily by finance, power and retail, with less representation from sectors such as technology and health care.⁵

Argentina’s domestic benchmark is narrower again, with energy, banks, utilities and materials carrying much of the weight. YPF, Grupo Financiero Galicia and Banco Macro are among its most important names, giving the index a distinctly local character and relatively limited exposure to sectors such as technology, health care and global consumer brands.

With the lineups set, the final comparison is what is actually driving each index.

For the FTSE 100, global forces often matter more than the UK economy. Many of its largest companies earn much of their revenue overseas, meaning a weaker pound can increase the sterling value of those foreign earnings. Oil and metals prices also affect its energy and mining companies, while demand for everyday goods influences its large consumer-staples businesses.⁶

The IBEX 35 is heavily influenced by its banks, making interest rates, lending activity, credit quality and economic growth important drivers. Its large utilities exposure also brings electricity demand, regulation, power prices and investment in energy networks and renewables into the picture. Consumer discretionary exposure adds another dimension, linking the index to global spending and currency movements.⁷

Meanwhile, Argentina’s S&P Merval is more directly shaped by domestic conditions. Policy reform, inflation, interest rates, currency stability and investor confidence can all have an outsized effect due to the high exposure to local banks, utilities, energy producers and materials companies.⁸

The Iran conflict has also pushed global oil prices higher, which may support Argentina’s growing energy exports and the earnings outlook for producers, although any benefit could be offset by higher inflation and broader market uncertainty.⁵

Buenos Aires-founded MercadoLibre is one of Latin America’s largest e-commerce and financial technology companies, operating an online marketplace alongside payments, credit and logistics services. With a market capitalisation of about A$133 billion, MercadoLibre is worth more than Argentina’s entire domestic benchmark⁵.

It is a constituent of the Nasdaq-100 Index, meaning Australian investors can gain exposure to MercadoLibre through the NDQ Nasdaq 100 ETF

England wins the only objective comparison, market muscle, while the remaining measures reveal three very different market lineups. Spain stands out for its mix of banking, utilities and global retail, while Argentina is much more closely tied to domestic policy, inflation and investor confidence.

There is no overall market winner. Instead, each benchmark offers a different combination of size, sector exposure and return drivers, while focusing on a single country can leave a portfolio more reliant on a narrow set of companies, industries or economic conditions.

For those who’d rather look beyond a single country, BGBL Global Shares ETF offers broad exposure to more than 1,200 companies across over 20 developed markets outside Australia, helping spread risk across a wide mix of countries, sectors and businesses.

A country index can tell investors plenty, but only after they look beyond the flag and ask which sectors dominate, how concentrated the market is and where its largest companies make their money. As with football, the scoreboard is only part of the story.