Understanding how market capitalization affects stock value
You can determine a company’s value (and thus the value of its stock) in many ways. The most basic way is to look at the company’s market value, also known as market capitalization (or market cap). Market capitalization is simply the value you get when you multiply all the outstanding shares of a stock by the price of a single share. Calculating the market cap is easy. If a company has 1 million shares outstanding and its share price is $10, the market cap is $10 million. Small cap, mid cap, and large cap aren’t references to headgear; they’re references to how large a company is as measured by its market value. Here are the five basic stock categories of market capitalization: ✓ Micro cap (under $250 million): These stocks are the smallest and hence the riskiest available. ✓ Small cap ($250 million to $1 billion): These stocks fare better than the microcaps and still have plenty of growth potential. The key word here is “potential.” ✓ Mid cap ($1 billion to $10 billion)...