7 companies are eating the world. What does it mean for your kids?

Right now, in winter 2025, if you put the whole of the UK stock market into your shopping basket - so not just the FTSE 100 but all 2000 companies on the London Stock Exchange - and if you tried to buy them outright, you'd need to find about $3 trillion dollars down the back of the sofa.  

Compare that to the combined value of The Magnificent Seven - the name given to the 7 largest tech stocks in the US (apple, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, Nvidia). Just these 7 companies alone are worth $22 trillion dollars. Gulp.

But even more astonishing is the fact that these 7 companies have more or less doubled their valuations in just two years, adding about $10 trillion dollars since 2023….

…which means they have added more value to their share price over the past 2 years, than the combined value of the UK stock market MULTIPLIED BY THREE. Gulp again.  

And that's pretty interesting - right? But that’s not actually my point. My point is this: how has their headcount grown during this period of extraordinary growth?

Answer: It hasn’t. Their headcount is flat.

So as a parent when you think about the future you’re preparing your kids for, what does this mean?  

It's hard to know, of course.  But it’s reasonably likely there will be fewer jobs and far greater competition for the ones you - or your kids - would want.  

Who do you think the future will reward? What is the education we should be giving our kids today to survive in this very different and more competitive world?

We can all debate the answers. But these questions are more than academic. The world is changing fast and now.