3 Stocks That Could Reach a $1 Trillion Market Cap

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

By Ryan Fuhrmann

NEW YORK (StreetAuthority) -- It has yet to happen, but some day a public company could reach a total market capitalization of a trillion dollars.

Think it can't happen? Consider that in this era of a global economy, where emerging nations such as China, India and Brazil will soon join the ranks of developed nations (and new emerging countries will rise), there is a chance for a certain class of elite companies to become even more dominant than ever before.

But first, let's talk a little about market cap and why a trillion dollar market cap would be so astounding.

Market cap is simply the number of shares outstanding of a stock multiplied by its current share price. These days, many companies, such as Pfizer(PFE), JPMorgan Chase(JPM) and BP(BP), sport market caps in excess of $100 billion. Fewer still, are companies with market caps in the hundreds of billions -- General Electric(GE) and IBM(IBM) are good examples.

Even fewer have what it takes to continue growing at the rates needed to reach a trillion-dollar market cap. But I've come up with three companies that just might do it.