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Since 1955, a rotating tally of five hundred companies each year has defined our notion of big corporations - but it shouldn't automatically determine whether any of those firms deserves to be a big part of your portfolio.

This year's FORTUNE 500 is out and ranked by revenues, Wal-Mart sits at number one. If you measure it by profits, Exxon-Mobil takes the top prize. Slice and dice this list any way you want: Earnings per share, number of employees, women CEOs, newcomers to the 500 club, companies dropped, etc. But from an investor's point of view, the bottom line is how a company contributes to your bottom line -- is it worthy of your investment dollars?

Corporate heft has some investing relevance, for liquidity purposes, among other things. Money manager and author Jim Huguet, for example, focuses his equity efforts on U.S.-based companies with market capitalizations of at least $15 billion. But he mainly considers other, more qualitiative factors, when considering whether to buy into a company.

Huguet keep "investing in the crown jewels of the best economic system on the globe." He wants to pick companies that can win against any company anywhere in the world.

With that in mind, he lists a dozen corporate traits in his book Great Companies, Great Returns. Huguet has the four Bs on his list:

• A well-known and highly regarded Brand
• A Business Plan that keeps a company in business for at least 50 years and helps it survive after the founder's departure;
• Outstanding shareholder returns, the Bottom Line of investing;
• And strong Barriers against other competitors -- the moat effect that Warren Buffett touts.

In addition, Huguet wants his companies to get at least 40 percent of their revenues from international operations. They must be terrific businesses that realize employees are their most important asset, with a management team that keeps the organization as an innovation-driven company that turns changes - that is, challenges -- into opportunities.

And after the corporate scandals of the past few years, Huguet believes corporate governance has taken on more importance. Recent studies have shown that, over time, companies with high corporate governance ratings outperform their peers with low corporate governance scores. For instance, General Electric under CEO Jeff Immelt has been touted as an example of how corporate governance should work; GE is one of the largest holdings in the Huguet's IDEX Great Companies-America Fund.

Watch this Friday's Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE to find out what companies in this year's FORTUNE 500 make Huguet's cut and which ones fall short.