Companies worth roughly $10 billion or more; deep liquidity, wide analyst coverage, and generally the least volatile tier of stocks.
Large-cap is the default tier for institutional portfolios. Names here have real analyst-coverage, are held by index funds, and usually have listed options and an easy borrow. Daily volume is typically measured in millions of shares, so a retail order never touches the price.
The flip side is efficiency. Public information is priced quickly and moves are usually driven by earnings, guidance, and macro rather than by anything you found first.
Example: a $60B company trading 6M shares a day at $75 turns over $450M daily. A 5,000-share order is 0.08% of a day's volume and will fill inside the spread.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.
Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.