Small Caps Are Beating the S&P 500 by the Widest Margin Since 2003. These ETFs Let You Ride the Rally

3 weeks ago 18

Ryne Mauck

Thu, July 16, 2026 astatine 11:23 AM CDT 6 min read

Quick Read

Small-cap stocks are experiencing 1 of their strongest stretches successful decades. After spending years overshadowed by ample and mega-cap maturation stocks, smaller companies are present outperforming the S&P 500 by the widest borderline since 2003.

Year-to-date, the Russell 2000 is up astir 20%, astir doubling the returns of the S&P 500 during the aforesaid period. For investors looking to enactment successful this rally, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF (IJR), and Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund (VB) each supply small-cap exposure, portion tracking antithetic indexes with chiseled concern approaches.

william87 / iStock

ETF

Index

# of Holdings

Expense Ratio

IWM

Russell 2000

~2,000

0.19%

IJR

S&P SmallCap 600

~600

0.06%

VB

CRSP U.S. Small Cap

~1,300

0.03%

Why are Small-Caps Rallying?

As investors look beyond the fistful of mega-cap exertion companies that person driven overmuch of the market's gains successful caller years, small-cap stocks person continued to summation momentum.

With the U.S. system remaining resilient contempt heightened planetary uncertainty, assurance successful smaller, domestically focused companies has improved.

At the aforesaid time, concerns that AI-related stocks person go progressively costly person prompted a increasing fig of investors to rotate into much attractively valued segments of the market.

In the existent environment, galore investors find that the valuation buffer betwixt large-cap and small-cap stocks remains attractive. The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), 1 of the astir wide utilized benchmarks for the wide market, presently trades astatine a price-to-earnings and price-to-book of 21.0x and 4.61x, respectively. In comparison, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) presently trades astatine a price-to-earnings and price-to-book of 15.78x and 1.99x.

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