Market Cap Categories Definition
Written by True Tamplin, BSc, CEPF®
Updated on January 11, 2021
What is Market Cap
Market capitalization, or market cap, is the combined value of a company’s outstanding stock. It is an estimate of the total value of a company.
Market Cap Categories
People often divide companies into different size categories based on their market caps:
- Micro-cap: Market cap under $300 million.
- Small-cap: $300 million to $2 billion.
- Mid-cap: From $2 billion to $10 billion.
- Large-cap: Greater than $10 billion.
Some have also used the terms mega-cap to refer to companies over $200 billion, and nano-cap for companies under $50 million.
However, there are no exact definitions for any of these categories, so the cutoffs can vary greatly.
Market Capitalization | Market Capitalization Categories FAQs
Market Cap is short for Market Capitalization.
Market Capitalization is the aggregate dollar-value of all outstanding shares of a company’s stock.
A company’s market cap is the first way an investor assesses how “big” a company is.
It is important to remember that a company’s market cap may be different than the true economic worth of their assets and ability to generate profits—market cap can be viewed as what the markets perceive a company to be worth.