What Are Large, Mid, and Small-Cap?
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Capitalization
“Cap” is short for capitalization. Market capitalization is essentially what a publicly traded company is worth.
According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA):
Market capitalization, or market cap, is one measurement of a company’s size. It’s the total value of a company’s outstanding shares of stock…
To calculate market cap, you take the total number of a company’s shares outstanding and multiply that figure by the company’s current share price.
For example, if a company has 5 million shares outstanding and its current stock price is $20, it has a market capitalization of $100 million.
Market capitalization = shares outstanding * stock price
$100 million = 5 million shares * $20 per share
Large, Mid, and Small-Cap in Theory vs. Practice
According to FINRA, the definitions of large, mid, and small-cap are
large-cap: market value of $10 billion or more
mid-cap: market value between $2 billion and $10 billion
small-cap: market value of less than $2 billion
However, what matters to investors is the size of companies in large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap funds. Those categories aren’t as clear.
Large-Cap
A couple practical sources for the large-cap stocks are:
Largest Vanguard Large-Cap
The largest holdings for the Vanguard Large-Cap Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) are:
Largest Fidelity Large Cap
The largest holdings of the Fidelity® Large Cap Stock Fund are similar but notably different:
Comparison of the Largest Vanguard and Fidelity Large-Cap
Half of the 10 largest holdings are the same for the two large-cap funds:
Microsoft Corp.
Apple Inc.
NVIDIA Corp.
Meta Platforms Inc.
Alphabet Inc.
The others are different.
Smaller Vanguard Large-Cap
The smallest Vanguard Large-Cap ETF companies are about 1/1,000th to 1/100th the size of the largest:
Mid-Cap
Two practical sources for mid-cap stocks are:
Although they’re huge, fewer mid-cap companies are household names.
Largest Vanguard Mid-Cap
The largest Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund holdings have market capitalizations several times the $10 billion upper FINRA limit:
Largest Fidelity Mid-Cap
The largest Fidelity® Mid Cap Index Fund holdings are closer in size to the largest Vanguard Mid-Cap holdings than the $10 billion upper FINRA limit:
Comparison of the Largest Vanguard and Fidelity Mid-Cap
Four of the top 10 holdings are the same for the two mid-cap funds:
Amphenol Corp.
TransDigm Group Inc.
Constellation Energy Corp.
Cintas Corp.
The rest are different.
Smallest Vanguard Mid-Cap
Many of the smallest Vanguard Mid-Cap Index holdings are much bigger than FINRA’s mid-cap range of $2 to $10 billion:
Small-Cap
The largest companies held in Vanguard and Fidelity small-cap funds are several times larger than FINRA's $10B upper limit for mid-cap stocks.
Largest Vanguard Small-Cap
The largest holdings in the Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund are:
Largest Fidelity Small-Cap
The largest holdings in the Fidelity® Small Cap Index Fund are:
Comparison of the Largest Vanguard and Fidelity Small-Cap
Only one company is in the top 10 holdings for both small-cap funds:
MicroStrategy Inc.
The others are different.
Smaller Vanguard Small-Cap
Even some of the smallest holdings in the Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund are larger than the $2 billion small-cap limit:
Broad Ranges
Neither Vanguard nor Fidelity follows the FINRA definitions of
large-cap: market value of $10 billion or more
mid-cap: market value between $2 billion and $10 billion
small-cap: market value of less than $2 billion
Unlike FINRA’s definition, the Vanguard:
upper limits for mid-cap and small-cap are several times larger and
its ranges overlap.
Household Names
It may be helpful to consider household names in each group. The following are examples from the Vanguard funds:
Sources
The list of companies held in Vanguard and Fidelity funds come from the following.
Large Cap
Mid-Cap:
Small-Cap:
The market capitalization information for this article come the MarketWatch Investing stock pages for each company such as: Microsoft Corp.
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Disclaimer
In addition to the usual disclaimers, neither this post nor these images include any financial, tax, or legal advice.
