Not long ago, we looked at foreign ownership of U.S. stocks, which raised a question from our readers: "How much of the world's stocks do U.S. investors own?"

We don't have a specific answer for that question, because the U.S. Treasury Department groups equities, such as stocks, in with debt having a term-to-maturity of one year or longer into the category of long-term securities in its data on the topic, where the question we can answer is "how much of the world's long-term securities do U.S. investors own?"

In the following interactive graphic, we show the answer recorded at the end of June for each year from 2002 through 2018. 

In the chart, we've compared apples-to-apples as best we can, showing the values of foreign long-term securities owned by U.S.-based investors against the backdrop of the value of U.S. long-term securities held by foreign interests.

Reviewing the history, we see that U.S. holdings of foreign long-term securities as a percent share of foreign holdings of U.S. long-term securities rose from 54% in 2002 to peak at 70% in 2007 before plunging to a low of 54% in 2010. Through 2018, it has recovered to 63% of the value of foreign-held U.S. long-term securities.