Business and Personal Finance Dictionary

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• LARGE-CAPITALIZATION (LARGE-CAP) STOCK
  
  This is the stock of large, established companies, with market capitalizations in the billions of dollars. (Market capitalization is figured by multiplying the number of outstanding shares by the current share price.) Large-cap stocks, such as those tracked by Standard & Poor's 500-stock Index (S&P 500), are generally considered less volatile than mid-cap or small-cap stocks. Mutual funds that invest in this type of stock are known as large-cap funds. Recently, however, several Internet stocks have enjoyed large market capitalizations as their stock prices have soared, though as new issues they would not ordinarily be thought of as large-cap stocks.
  
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