What does ‘Large Cap – Big Cap’ mean
Large cap (sometimes “big cap”) refers to a company with a market capitalization value of more than $10 billion. Large cap is a shortened version of the term “large market capitalization.” Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the number of a company’s shares outstanding by its stock price per share. The dollar amounts used for the classifications “large cap,” mid cap” or “small cap” are only approximations that change over time.
Explaining ‘Large Cap – Big Cap’
Investors like to diversify their portfolios by investing in companies in different industries and at varying levels of assets, revenue and market size. A company’s share price tells you little about how big it is. A company with a market price of $100 can be much smaller than a company with a market price of $10 depending on the number of shares it has outstanding in the market.
Market Capitalization Calculation
Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the share price of the company’s stock. The number of shares outstanding is reported on a quarterly basis, but the price of the stock can change from minute to minute. The value of market capitalization is as fluid as the market price. For example, a company with 10 billion shares outstanding trading at a price of $10 per share has a market capitalization of $100 billion. Likewise, a company with 100 billion shares outstanding, and trading at a price of $1, also has a market capitalization of $100 billion.
Market Capitalization Categories
In general, stocks are lumped into three categories of capitalization: large cap, mid cap and small cap. A large-cap company has a market capitalization over $10 billion. A mid-cap company has a market capitalization between $2 billion and $10 billion, and a small-cap company has less than $2 billion in market capitalization. In general, small caps also have lower trading liquidity, less access to the capital markets and less experience, and there’s less information available about small caps than large caps.
Further Reading
- US stocks in the presence of oil price risk: Large cap vs. Small cap – dialnet.unirioja.es [PDF]
- Financial Indices Modelling and Trading utilizing Deep Learning Techniques: The ATHENS SE FTSE/ASE Large Cap Use Case – ieeexplore.ieee.org [PDF]
- Commentary—The economic and statistical significance of stock returns on customer satisfaction – pubsonline.informs.org [PDF]
- Small cap and value investing offer both high returns and a hedge – jwm.pm-research.com [PDF]
- The joint dynamics of liquidity, returns, and volatility across small and large firms – www.econstor.eu [PDF]
- Real estate risk exposure of equity real estate investment trusts – link.springer.com [PDF]
- … return relationship: An empirical study of different statistical methods for estimating the Capital Asset Pricing Models (CAPM) and the Fama-French model for large cap … – arxiv.org [PDF]
- Overreaction evidence from large-cap stocks – www.emerald.com [PDF]
