Formula
Market cap = current price × shares issued
With a share price of KRW 50,000 and 20 million shares issued, the market cap is KRW 1 trillion.
Definition
Market capitalization, usually shortened to market cap, is the current share price times the number of shares issued, showing how much it would cost to acquire the whole company at today's market price. A share price alone tells only the price of one share, but market cap shows the size of the whole company.
That is why comparing the absolute share prices of companies means little. A company at KRW 50,000 a share is not necessarily larger than one at KRW 5,000, because the number of shares issued differs. Company size is compared by market cap, not by share price.
Market cap shows a company's size and standing in the market. Large companies tend to have stable businesses and relatively smaller price swings, while small companies tend to have more room to grow but larger swings. Jupick covers the stocks with the largest market caps in Korea and overseas first.
How to read it
Market cap is a yardstick for a company's size; it does not by itself indicate good or bad. By size, stocks are commonly called large caps, mid caps and small caps.
Large caps trade actively and come with plenty of information, so their prices tend to be relatively stable, while small caps can move sharply on little trading. The same metric means different things for large and small caps, so they call for different expectations.
Market cap is also the base for calculating PER and PBR. Market cap divided by net income is PER, and divided by net assets is PBR.
Market cap across the market now
The values that fall at each point when the stocks Jupick covers are lined up by Market cap, smallest to largest. Positions in the line are used instead of an average because a few unusually large values can drag a single average a long way.
KoreaBased on 200 stocks
| Lowest 25% | Middle | Highest 25% |
|---|---|---|
| ₩2.7T | ₩4.9T | ₩13.4T |
Smallest value ₩2.0T, largest value ₩1,228T
OverseasBased on 199 stocks
| Lowest 25% | Middle | Highest 25% |
|---|---|---|
| $62.6B | $102.7B | $204.5B |
Smallest value $8.9B, largest value $5.34T
How to read each range
- Lowest 25%
- The smallest quarter of the stocks Jupick covers. Jupick includes stocks with large market caps first to begin with, so even the stocks here are not small in the market as a whole. The small end of this table is not the same as small caps in the overall market.
- Middle half
- The middle half by size within Jupick's list. Market cap is only a yardstick for a company's size, so being in this band does not mean good or bad.
- Highest 25%
- The largest quarter within Jupick's list. Market cap has a distribution with a long tail toward the top, so even within this band the gap between the top and the bottom often ranges from several times to several tens of times. Comparing with the largest value also shown in the table helps.
The two values at either end of the table above are the boundaries that split the stocks into three groups. What it means to belong to each group is written above.
Two stocks that fall just either side of a boundary have practically the same value. Being in different groups does not by itself make them different. The boundaries are drawn again from each day’s sample, so a company can change groups even when nothing about it has changed.
Lowest and highest describe the order of size only, not good or bad. The data is updated once a day.
Largest stocks by market cap now
- 1ASAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO,.LTD₩1,228T
- 2ASK hynix Inc.₩918T
- 3BSK Square Co., Ltd.₩99.3T
- 4DLG ENERGY SOLUTION, LTD.₩93.2T
- 5BSAMSUNG ELECTRO-MECHANICS CO.,LTD₩85.7T
All stocks on Jupick's watchlist, sorted from the largest market cap.
Points to watch
- Market cap is based on shares issued, which can differ from the shares that actually trade freely in the market (free float). When major shareholders hold large stakes, the volume actually available to trade is small relative to market cap.
- Market cap also changes when the share count rises through a new share issue or falls through the cancellation of repurchased shares. Looking at the share price alone can miss these changes.
- A large market cap does not mean sound finances. Size and financial health are separate questions, so market cap needs to be read with Jupick's grades.