On July 13 I wrote a blog post titled “Small Caps’ Big Week”, and I applauded that brief trend as long overdue. The big story this week, so far, is more of the same, per the CNBC graphic below.
As I have been reporting for a while, it’s been a tough run for small and mid cap equities over the most recent 10+ years, but maybe we are starting to see the beginning of a long term trend similar to the 2001-2010 period when small cap regularly led large cap? In fact, historically over a very long time horizon from 1926-2023, small cap equities returned +11.8% compared to +10.3% for large cap equities (Morningstar).
I am a follower of Tom Lee, outspoken bull from FundStrat, who recently commented on CNBC on the merits of the small cap space. He covered many of the virtues of small cap including the Russell 2000 having a relatively low P/E of 11 and faster earnings growth. From a technical standpoint he highlighted a historical perspective that 10 out of the past 11 days the Russell 2000 has moved more than 1% and the 9 times that it did that since 1979 the average 12-month gain was +40%!
Some of the other rationales for his bullishness include a political perspective, which in my mind is highly suspect because the election is still three months away, where the market is projecting a Trump presidency that will benefit M&A, deregulation and regional banks that would benefit small cap stocks.
From our website, the “D&A investment philosophy centers on long-term strategic asset allocation as the main driver of portfolio returns and diversification amongst asset classes as the primary means of managing risk.”
If you asked us what we think the market will do we would say “Beats Me!”, but most client accounts would have some exposures to the asset classes that are leading the markets at most any time. Client accounts have benefitted from exposure to large cap equities during their great historical run and we expect that client accounts will benefit again as other asset classes take over market leadership. The challenge is to know when the lead changes, and that is very difficult to do except by luck.