Vanguard Long Term Bond (the Fund) is an open-end management investment company. The Fund seeks to track the performance of a market-weighted bond index with a long-term dollar-weighted average maturity. The fund is designed to track the performance of the Barclays Capital U.S. Long Government/Credit Float Adjusted Index. It invests at least 80% of assets in bonds held in the index. The fund maintains a dollar-weighted average maturity consistent with that of the index, which generally ranges between 15 and 30 years. As of Dec 31 2013, the Fund's investments portfolio was valued at $5,675,862,000. We show 5 historical shares outstanding datapoints in our BLV shares outstanding history coverage, used to compute BLV market cap on those dates.
Understanding the changing numbers of shares outstanding, the changing
share price, and the resulting changing BLV market cap history over the course of time is important for investors
interested in comparing BLV's market cap history versus its peers.
Many "beginner" or "novice" investors will look at one stock trading at a price of $10 per share and another trading at
a price of $20 per share and think the latter company is worth twice as much. Of course, that is a completely meaningless comparison without also knowing how many shares outstanding there are for each of the two companies,
and then calculating their respective market caps. Comparing the share price of BLV versus a peer is one thing; comparing
BLV market cap versus a peer is a completely different story.
Furthermore, via fluctuation both in per-share price and in the number of shares outstanding (via issuance of new shares over time, the repurchase of existing shares),
the market cap for a company like BLV can fluctuate over the course of history.
With this page we aim to empower investors researching BLV by allowing them to research the BLV market cap history. |
Video: The Importance of Market Cap
