Small Cap Stars

From 1926 to 2012, small-cap stocks generated an average annualized return of 11.9% vs. 9.8% for large-cap stocks. Many of the largest corporations in the world started out with low-priced stocks that eventually provided early investors asustained longer-term return.

Small-cap companies often start with a small market share in niche and faster-growing markets, giving them room to grow relative to their large-cap counterparts, although often with an accompanying higher level of risk. Additionally, they can have a greater potential for margin expansion since they generally operate well below peak levels in early stages – and they can benefit significantly from economies of scale. This motif focuses on small-cap companies with demonstrated strong earnings growth and positive cash flows over the past five years.

We identified US-listed stocks and American Depository Receipts of companies that are engaged in activities relevant to this watchlist's theme. We then filtered out companies that have a share price of less than .00 or a market capitalization less than 00 million, and excluded illiquid stocks by screening companies for liquidity i.e. average bid-ask spreads, dollar volume traded etc. Finally the proprietary Motif Optimization Engine determined the constituent stocks. Learn more about how we select our watchlists.

Motif is an online brokerage built on thematic portfolios of up to 30 stocks and ETFs. Founded in 2010 by Hardeep Walia, Motif combines complex proprietary algorithms with skilled advisers to develop these thematic portfolios. Learn more about our team.

First, we determined each company's percentage of total revenue derived from this watchlist's theme. Second, we applied a pure-play factor to give greater relative weight to companies that derive a higher percentage of their revenue from this theme. Finally, we weighted each company by its market capitalization adjusted for revenue exposure to the theme.

More details on how we build and weight watchlists are available here.