Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Market Capitalization explained

In stocks, typically you will hear analysts and investors speak of companies as "majors" or "juniors".

This terminology is usually derived from a company's market capitalization.

Market capitalization:

Market capitalization represents the public consensus on the value of a company's equity. A corporation, including all of its assets, may be freely bought and sold through purchases and sales of stock, which will determine the price of the company's shares. Its market capitalization is this share price multiplied by the number of shares in issue, providing a total value for the company's shares and thus for the company as a whole.

Essentially - it's the price of the stock of the company multiplied by its shares outstanding.
eg# Share price at $3/share and 30,000,000 shares o/s = $3 x 30M = $90M market cap company

Then you ask, what are the blue-chips and the juniors? Most of the time juniors are the nano and/or micro-caps whereas the majors are the blue-chips. Those are typically the ones you read about in newspapers and such (Barrick Gold, Kin

Nano-Cap

Nano-Cap is capitalization below $50 million.

Micro-Cap

Micro-Cap is capitalization between $50 and $250 million.

Small-Cap

Small-Cap is capitalization between approximately $250 million and $2 billion

Mid-Cap

Mid-Cap is capitalization between approximately $2 billion and $10 billion

Large-Cap or blue chip

Large-Cap or blue chip is capitalization over approximately $10 billion (Megacap over $1 trillion)

No comments: