Every year, Merrill Lynch publishes its "World Wealth Report," which analyzes high net worth investors and their investing patterns. According to the wealth report, the number of people globally with more than 1 million dollars in net assets swelled by 6.5 percent in 2005 to a record 8.7 million.

According to Xinhua, a Chinese newspaper, "that's about half a million more than the entire population of New York City and twice the number of millionaires identified in the first survey a decade ago." The report also concluded that…

• The assets of the wealthy increased 8.5 percent to 33.3 trillion dollars.
• Those with financial assets of more than 30 million dollars — known as ultra high net worth individuals — grew 10.2 percent to 85,400.
• The fastest-growing haven of the new rich is South Korea, where the number of millionaires shot up 21.3 percent from 2004. It was followed by India, up 19.3 percent, and Russia, up 17.4 percent.

[This is an interesting statistic. India has received a lot of news coverage about its growing middle class and its burgeoning economy, but I've read very little about Russia or South Korea's economic growth.]

• South Africa, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil all posted double-digit increases.

[No big surprise here.]

• The number of Chinese millionaires grew by 6.8 percent.
• The U.S. still remained home to the greatest number of millionaires (2.67 million millionaires) although the growth rate of 6.8 percent slowed compared to 9.9 percent in 2004, resulting from rising oil prices and higher interest rates which affected stock market returns.