Among the three major U.S. stock exchanges -- the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and over-the-counter (OTC) markets -- there are more than 12,000 publicly traded stocks available for investors. However, many of these are rather tiny, up-and-coming businesses.
If you limit your search to companies with valuations of $250 million or more, the number comes to about 3,600 as of June 2025. And if we look at companies with market capitalizations (the value of all of a company's shares combined) of $1 billion or higher, there were about 2,500 to choose from.