I am relative new in investing and was wandering how stocks are categorized - Large Cap, Small Cap and MicroCap.

I understand MicroCap is also known as Penny stock. Can somebody enlighten me? I noticed several discussion boards here were closed because they are considered Penny stocks.

Thanks.

Microcap and Penny Stocks are not the same thing. Penny Stocks have to do with the price per share, when they are under a dollar or counted by pennies. Microcap has to do with the value of the company (all the outstanding shares multiplied the share price). Microcap companies have really small valuations, where as small, mid and large cap have increasingly larger valuations.

Fuskie
Who does not have the actual valuation breakdowns but hopes this helps...

Micro Cap companies generally have a market cap under $100 million

Small Cap from $100 million to $2 billion

Mid Cap's are generally anywhere from $2 billion to $8-$10 billion

Large caps are over ten billion


market cap is share price x amount of shares

-Mike

For definitions like microcap, small cap, mega cap, etc.--

http://investopedia.com/dictionary


To quickly find whether a stock is small, medium or large--

http://morningstar.com
type in the stock symbol at the top, and then click on "data interpreter" on the right

(works for mutual fund symbols too--will tell you, on the whole, the average size of the stocks owned by the fund--just need to type the fund's symbol in at the top of morningstar.com)

--Todd