The market capitalization of all the companies listed on the NYSE is roughly

• A. $900 million
• B. $1.5 trillion
• C. $420 million
• D. $15 trillion

Answer: (D)

The scale of the total market value across all listed companies is huge. Market capitalization adds up across every firm on the exchange, and each company’s value is price × shares outstanding. On the NYSE you have many large firms with market caps in the hundreds of billions, plus thousands of smaller ones. Even a handful of the biggest names already accounts for trillions in value, and adding all of the other listed companies pushes the total well into the trillions. So, a figure like 15 trillion fits the expected magnitude for the entire NYSE, while numbers in the hundreds of millions or even a few trillions would be far too small to capture the full aggregate.