Small-cap strategies accounted for five of the top 10 domestic equity strategies in the year ended June 30 in Morningstar Inc.'s separate account/collective investment trust database.
The median return for all equity strategies for the 12 months was 22.47%, slightly above the Russell 3000 index for the same period at 21.46%.
Andy Kwon, Chicago-based data analyst at Morningstar, said the median returns for all small-cap domestic equity strategies were better than those of midcap and large-cap strategies in the second quarter, accounting for much of the advantage for the year ended June 30.
“This quarter it looks like small cap is doing the best out of the three,” said Mr. Kwon in a telephone interview. “The second in line is large cap.”
The median small-cap gross return for the second quarter was 3.71%, while large-cap returned 2.7% and midcap returned 2.29%, all showing drops from the first quarter.
The first quarter's median returns for all capitalizations were small cap at 12.43%, midcap at 12.1% and large cap at 10.55%.
“The slip in performance wasn't as bad as in the fourth quarter. (For example), the large-cap median (in the fourth quarter) was 0.46%, so we're not seeing the performance as bad as the fourth quarter, it seems to be,” Mr. Kwon said.
Only two of the top 10 separate accounts for the year ended March 31 reappeared in the top 10 list for the second quarter's report. They are the small-cap value equity strategy of Cooke & Bieler LP and the master limited partnership portfolio of Invesco Ltd. And while small-cap strategies dominated the top 10, they did not make it into the top three.