1  BIS Review 25/1999  estimates reported by Bordo, Eichengreen and Kim – of pre-1914 investments were in government and municipal securities, railways, resource-extraction companies and public utilities. Today, it is safe to estimate that a larger proportion of investments are in commercial, industrial and financial concerns, whose assets are more intangible and whose operations are less transparent.
Third, prior to 1914, the vast majority of portfolio capital flows took the form of bonds. More recently, portfolio flows have been more evenly split between bonds and stocks.