What is Market Capitalization?
The total market value of a company's outstanding shares.
In Depth
Market capitalization equals share price multiplied by total shares outstanding. It classifies companies into mega-cap (>$200B), large-cap ($10B-$200B), mid-cap ($2B-$10B), small-cap ($300M-$2B), and micro-cap. Market cap is the primary determinant of index inclusion (e.g., the S&P 500's weighting is cap-weighted).
Example
A company with 500 million shares trading at $100 has a market cap of $50 billion (large-cap).