To: White Shoes who wrote (20451 ) 7/31/2000 1:11:37 PM From: KLP Respond to of 28311 "Let's Hear It for the Little Guy" INDEED!!!! Large Cap INSP and Small Cap GNET KLPsiliconinvestor.com Small caps no longer feel inferior to big brothers By Eric Wahlgren NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters) - Let's hear it for the little guy. It used to be the case that small-fry stocks were overshadowed by their bigger brothers and sisters in the Standard & Poor's 500 index of large capitalization U.S. companies. But in these herky-jerky market times, bigger is no longer necessarily better. As a group, the 2000 small capitalization stocks in the Russell 2000 Index this year are outperforming larger issues. Many big caps have been put on the defensive by earnings disappointments, doubts about valuations and nail-biting over interest rates. Sure, the Russell 2000 like the other stock indexes in under water. But it is off only 2.9 percent year to date. In contrast, the S&P500 is down 3.4 percent and the Nasdaq composite index , stacked with technology heavyweights, has lost 9.98 percent. Until July 27, the Russell 2000 had spent most of July and the prior month in positive territory while the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average was in the negative and the S&P500 and the Nasdaq bounced between the red and black. "This year small cap funds are not being overshadowed by technology," said Carl Wittnebert, director of research at TrimTabs.com, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company that tracks fund data. "Last year tech got the attention." SMALL CAP FUNDS SUCKING IN MONEY In a sign of their new-found cachet, the small cap funds that TrimTabs monitors have sucked in a net $912 million so far this year, Wittnebert said. Over all of last year, $690 million flowed out of these funds. Why are investors having a change of heart? More and more are realizing that today's plucky small cap may be tomorrow's mid or big cap returns-monger. For instance, e-commerce software provider BroadVision Inc. (NASDAQ: BVSN) and drug research and development company Human Genome Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: HGSI) were both recently booted out of the Russell 2000 for growing too big. In the 12-month period ending May 31, BroadVision's stock appreciated 519.8 percent while Human Genome's jumped a not-too-shabby 315.4 percent. Currently, the Russell 2000 company with the largest market cap is automotive supplier Lear Corp. (NYSE: LEA) at $1.5 billion, according to the Frank Russell Co., which maintains the index. "For every JDS Uniphase Corp. (NASDAQ: JDSU) that we hear about today, there was a small cap a few years ago," said Barry Hyman, market strategist for Ehrenkrantz, King Nussbaum Inc. "I would constantly be scouring the list for companies that are just starting up." EARTHBOUND VALUATIONS HELP SMALL CAPS' PROFILE One of the main traits of small caps that has caught Wall Street's fancy is their relatively low valuations compared with larger cap stocks. On July 21, stocks in the Standard and Poor's 600 small cap index had an average price-to-earnings ratio of 18.6, said Joseph Kalinowski, equity strategist at I/B/E/S International. Kalinowski did not have similar figures for the Russell 2000. Meanwhile, issues in the S&P500 on that same date had an average price-to-earnings ratio of 25.6, Kalinowski said. "The valuation of the small cap sector is a lot more attractive than some of the big cap stocks that have gone up to ridiculous levels," said Lance James, portfolio manager of the the David L. Babson & Co.'s Babson Enterprise Fund and Babson Enterprise Fund II. "You don't usually find that company trading at 100 times earnings. This has been a year when you have seen a lot of rummaging through the small cap sector for value." FRISKY M&A ACTIVITY MAKING SMALL CAPS HOTTER A slew of takeovers of small cap players by large cap companies has also fired up the once cooler sector. In a deal announced on July 26, large cap InfoSpace Inc. (NASDAQ: INSP), which syndicates content to Internet portals and wireless companies, agreed to buy small cap Go2Net Inc (NASDAQ: GNET) for about $4 billion in stock. Go2Net, a Web site operator and technology provider, closed at 55-3/4 on July 28, up about 643 percent from its 7-1/2 closing price on the same day a year ago. "We continue to see major takeouts," said Satya Pradhuman, a Merrill Lynch senior specialist who follows small caps. "This is a sign that many of these companies are really cheap. Corporate America certainly has its eye on them."