Nooby question bear with me...

Who cares about market capitalization if one company could have 5% of its equity outstanding in the form of stocks and another could have 50%? You see market capitalization everywhere but I don't understand how its any kind of useful thing to know about a company.

7 Comments
 

You are misunderstanding what equity is.

A stock is just a share of the company--it represents ownership of that company. So all of a company's stock together is the company itself. There is no "5% equity outstanding" or "50% equity outstanding". If you know how many stocks a company has, and you know the stock price, then you know the market cap. And that itself is the size of the company--100%.

 

Market cap matters because size matters. If you invest $1M in a company with a $10B market cap, you're a drop in the bucket. You're getting larger percentage stake if you invest in a company with a $10M market cap, though. See the difference?

"The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing." - Phillip Fisher
 

Good question, OP.. here are my 2 cents... market cap - to me - loosely indicates the impact one particular company can have on the stock market.. it means nothing to the average joe but I would assume it is used in the trading community to gauge the amount of "damage" one stock can do - kinda like boxers are classified into buckets based on their weight.

 

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