Big gains from small caps

In an environment of middling inflation and low interest rates, small-cap stocks tend to beat big blue-chips. John Stepek explains why, and how to invest in them.

In an environment of middling inflation and low interest rates, small-cap stocks tend to beat big blue-chips, says John Stepek.

Last year was a good one for stockmarket investors, almost regardless of where you had your money. The UK was by no means the best-performing market of the year, but even so, during 2017 the FTSE 100 returned around 11%, while the wider FTSE All-Share returned just over 13% (including dividends). That wasn't bad. However, you could have done a lot better and you wouldn't have had to venture beyond these shores to do it. If you'd shunned larger stocks in favour of investing in the Numis Smaller Companies index (which covers the bottom tenth of the UK stockmarket), you'd have made 18.8%.If you'd invested in Aim, the London Stock Exchange's junior market, says Tom Stevenson in The Daily Telegraph, you'd have made a "stonking" 27.4%.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.