Market Cap Game Show: What’s Rare Earth Worth?

David Gardner (0:00)

The price per share of a stock tells you almost nothing. It's one number, but how many shares exist? In math, you multiply two factors, price times shares outstanding. Without the second of those, well, you can't do meaningful math or understand much of the market. Fools with a capital F know that price times shares equals market capitalization, a company's actual price tag. To make that lesson stick, we invented a game. On August 9th, 2017, the Market Cap Game Show was born and we've played it every quarter since. You're playing too, against my guest stars, against your spouse, your kids. Can you outscore my talented contestants? It's that time again, 10 new stocks, three guest stars, two of my favorite fools, longtime Motley Fool producer and personality, Mac Greer and all-star analyst and advisor Yasser El-Shimy, and you, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

It's the Rule Breaker Investing podcast with Motley Fool co-founder, David Gardner.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. This is the Market Cap Game Show, played here in September, 2026

Wow, for the 43rd time. Joining me this week are Mac Greer and Yasser El-Shimy, and they will be competing for one of our coveted four seats in our upcoming 2027 March Market Cap Madness Final Four, headlined by defending two-time world champion, Emily Flippen.

And of course, the third player and to us, the most important, is you. That's right, you, our dear fellow Foolish listeners. So just a quick reminder to you, as we play along, the market cap is a simple way to measure the value of stocks of public companies. You simply multiply today's share price by the number of shares outstanding, and that gives you the market cap. These days, market caps range from $4 trillion or so at the high end, companies like Nvidia and Apple, right down to, well, it can be a quite low number in some cases, and no spoilers, we might have some of those today. As my producer Bart begins to crank up our signature market cap game show music, let me just remind, especially new listeners, new players, how the game works. I'll be mentioning a stock, neither Mac nor Yasser knows what stock is coming. I'll turn to one of them and ask that fool to state a numerical range within which the market cap falls, his best estimate. The other contestant and you playing at home will simply say, I agree, meaning it's accurate, the stock's value falls inside that range, or I disagree. I think it's outside that stated range. So you simply agree or disagree, and if you get it right, give yourself a plus one. Now, we did add one new rule. For the first time in Market Cap Game Show history, we played it last time. I liked it, so we're going to stick with it here. It's the King-Sharon Rule, which essentially means that when you, one of my two contestants, Mac or Yasser, when you decide the other guy is wrong, it's outside his stated range, you can now say, I think it's higher than that or lower than that. If you do that and you're right, you get an extra half point. So you have an opportunity to bet a half point if you're confident you know which direction the stock was outside your opponent's stated range. Now, if you're wrong, you're still going to get, well, you're going to lose a half point. So you'll still get a half point for saying outside. But that is the King Sharon Rule. Gentlemen, any questions about that?

Yasser El-Shimy (3:56)

Clear as day.

Mac Greer (3:57)

No questions.

David Gardner (3:58)

Excellent. That's the Market Cap Game Show. We're focused on the real market caps of real stocks. Nobody knows the next stock that's coming. A perfect score would be, well, it used to be 10, but now I think it's something like 12 and a half.

All right. Yasser El-Shimy is a senior investment analyst at The Motley Fool who covers a wide range of companies, especially small and medium caps and international markets. He works as the advisor for global partners, The Motley Fool Service for International Investing. Yasser has a background in political risk and policy analysis as well. And in his free time, Yasser, you like to garden, play squash, watch soccer, and study Italian.

Welcome back, Yasser El-Shimy.

Yasser El-Shimy (4:43)

Hi, David. I'm so happy to be back. I have had a very long losing streak on this show. I'm hoping to turn it around this time.

David Gardner (4:51)

I appreciate that, Yasser. You have also won in the past. Let's get started. All right. Yasser, I want to start our September 2026 Market Cap game show with a question to you about work.