Visual Capitalist

on Did you know that nearly one-fifth of all the gold ever mined is held by central banks? Besides investors and jewelry consumers, central banks are a major source of gold demand. In fact, in 2022, central banks snapped up gold at the fastest pace since 1967. However, the record gold purchases of 2022 are in stark contrast to the 1990s and early 2000s, when central banks were net sellers of gold....

America Is Shaking Off Its Addiction to Oil Bloomberg has created an impressive graphical presentation on how America’s oil addiction is waning. Click here to view it in a new window. Gasoline, at an average cost of $2.67 per gallon, is now the cheapest it has been in the United States since 2010. This comes in tandem with a tumbling oil price, which has left oil exporting countries such as Russia in a tough situation....

Chart: The Netflix Generation Millennials, streaming platforms, and the slow death of cable television The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays. Since launching in the United States in 1948, cable television quickly emerged as the media consumption method of choice for families around the world. Cable brought to us some of the most memorable and noteworthy events in history. People saw the fall of the Berlin Wall from their living rooms in 1989 – and many even remember being inspired by Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon twenty years earlier....

The Trump Effect on Currencies Rhetoric has already had an impact on currencies in a big way The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays. Targeting companies or entire nations on Twitter is an unprecedented and controversial method of communication for a President-elect – but one can’t argue with its effectiveness so far. In today’s chart, we take a look at Donald Trump’s rather unconventional form of “monetary policy”, and how it has potentially influenced the U....

A person’s wealth can be made up of many different assets. Net worth, the measure we use to gauge wealth, is actually the sum of all of a person’s assets after subtracting liabilities (such as loans). Therefore, net worth can be comprised of liquid savings, stocks, mutual funds, bonds, real estate, vehicles, retirement accounts (IRAs, pensions), and many other types of assets. But how does the composition of net worth differ for a person with $100k in net worth, versus that of a billionaire?...

The color red is the perfect example. When it is used as a primary color for McDonald’s, red is meant to energize and attract the attention of potential customers. Red is also thought by some psychologists as a hunger stimulant, which might help them sell more Big Macs and McNuggets at the end of the day. However, in the case of a company such as British Airways, red is supposed to represent none of those things....

Unlike traditional investments in financial assets, luxury goods can be difficult to value if one does not have an appreciation for their form. A rare painting, for example, does not generate cash flows, meaning its value is truly in the eye of the beholder. To gain some insight into the market for luxury goods, this infographic takes data from Knight Frank’s 2021 Wealth Report to compare the preferences of nine global regions....

China’s economic prowess is one of these new paradigms that has emerged, but many people still can’t really wrap their heads around the scale or scope of it. It’s happened suddenly, and the ramifications are extremely relevant to our investments and understanding. Here’s four maps on China’s trade dominance that will help you think differently about the world: China is the world’s #1 trade partner Image courtesy of: Connectography The United States is the number one trading partner for 56 countries, with important relationships throughout North America, South America, and Western Europe....

As in any new and rapidly-growing market, this kind of investor intent and the overall feeling of market sentiment matters a lot. That’s because there are no historical averages or ratios to apply as baselines for value, and if things head south there is always the possibility of a mass exodus. Buy, Hodl, and Prosper? Today’s infographic comes to us from Raconteur, and it helps map out the future price expectations of crypto investors, along with how long they plan to hold onto their digital assets....

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the creative economy accounts for 4.2% of the GDP and is valued at $704 billion. It’s also a segment of the economy that’s still growing. For example, art director and graphic design jobs are growing across the country at rates of 9% and 13%, respectively. While there is no consensus on where to draw the line on what jobs or sectors are “creative”, we do know that cities are the primary places where measurable creative activities take place....

The Cost of Living Around the World Imagine that users submitted hundreds of thousands of prices for everyday items, and that they all got compiled into a massive database. Then, suppose a worldwide index of prices was created that compared the cost of living across different places by using these many data points. Well, that’s already happened at Numbeo which is the world’s largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries....

Timeline: The Future of Money For a larger version of this infographic, click here. Predicting the future isn’t easy. For example, in 1977 it was predicted by Ken Olsen, a well-known tech entrepreneur at the time, that “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” It was not only an inaccurate prediction, but decades later the exact opposite has happened. Billions of computers now fit in our homes and our pockets....

Surprisingly, the situation is not as different on land as you might think. In some counties in the U.S., especially those with lots of oil and gas activity, there are billions of gallons of waste water, brackish water, or saline water that aren’t potable for human consumption. At the same time, these counties are receiving limited rainfall, and freshwater has become an increasingly scarce and valuable commodity. Water Innovation is Needed The fact is, horizontal drilling and fracking operations use large amounts of water....

Records for renewable energy consumption were smashed around the world in 2017. Looking at national and state grids, progress has been extremely impressive. In Costa Rica, for example, renewable energy supplied five million people with all of their electricity needs for a stretch of 300 consecutive days. Meanwhile, the U.K. broke 13 green energy records in 2017 alone, and California’s largest grid operator announced it got 67.2% of its energy from renewables (excluding hydro) on May 13, 2017....

Blockchain can be an elusive concept. Its abstract nature leaves many wondering if this emerging technology is the global catalyst evangelists claim it to be. But blockchain is more of a tool than a catalyst – not a one-size-fits-all, but a new foundation underpinning our everyday tasks. It offers industries a techno-driven facelift with its ability to increase productivity, ensure transparency, and reduce wasted time and paperwork. Today’s graphic is inspired by a study from McKinsey....

While we always encourage sharing our content for free (with attribution), we frequently receive inquiries about customizing our graphics for commercial uses. That’s why we’ve built Visual Capitalist Licensing—a dedicated platform which allows you to make our world-class graphics your own. Starting today, we’ll be adding new visuals multiple times per week to give you access to our most topical and groundbreaking graphics, and the data that drives them.​ Below are some of the latest visualizations added to the content library, ready to be licensed, downloaded, and modified for use in stories, reports, or published articles....

From burgers to pad thai, there’s a quick service restaurant that’ll satisfy almost any appetite. With all this choice, which fast food chains are the most popular among consumers? Using data from QSR Magazine, today’s infographic ranks the top 50 largest fast food chains in the U.S. by sales in 2019, providing insight into the types of foods Americans have been craving. Fast Food Chains Ranked, by Revenue In 2019, the 50 largest fast food chains in the U....

on But fast forward to the end of last week, and SVB was shuttered by regulators after a panic-induced bank run. So, how exactly did this happen? We dig in below. Road to a Bank Run SVB and its customers generally thrived during the low interest rate era, but as rates rose, SVB found itself more exposed to risk than a typical bank. Even so, at the end of 2022, the bank’s balance sheet showed no cause for alarm....

Six Problems Facing Driverless Cars and Their Track Record Driverless car technology is here to stay. Their track record so far is very impressive with Google cars driving over a million miles since 2009. During that time, 13 accidents have been recorded, but all of them were caused by other drivers or by human intervention. The robots themselves have been virtually flawless. Right now, various vehicle manufacturers (Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Toyota, Tesla, Audi, and more) have already built prototypes of driverless cars, and tech companies (Google, Uber, and potentially even Apple) are working on similar ambitions....

Tech in Vancouver: History and Timeline Recently, we asked ourselves the question: is Vancouver really a global tech hub or is that just the local spin? In researching this, we came across an amazing wealth of information on the Vancouver tech scene and decided to turn it into a three part infographic series that covers the past, present, and future of tech in Vancouver. To kick things off, we dug deep into Vancouver’s past to see how the industry emerged....