Q. What is going to turn things around for small caps?

Right now, there is no convincing reason to buy small caps.

Lower case letters are included in the form of small caps.

No wonder that the small caps have had such a hard time keeping up.

Small caps have lagged over the last couple of weeks.

Over the longer run, small caps tend to do a bit better because they are the more aggressive companies.

Q. At base, what is the case for small caps?

"I would suggest investors take a hard look at small caps now," he said.

And the smallest of the small caps are very cheap.

We have seen periods when the economy contracted and small caps did well.

"That suggests the risk levels in small caps currently are probably lower."

But in the small caps, it's likely to have a greater effect."

But this is a time when small caps play catch up."

Of course, there is no guarantee that either these stocks or small caps in general will take off.

"I'd invested in small caps for years and done well.

"I still think the real oomph is in small caps."

"If people start loading up on small caps at the beginning of 2004, we think they'll be disappointed."

I think the smaller caps holding up is probably good news."

"On the other end, people are concerned about being in risky stocks like small caps."

Q. Why have small caps done so well, and what is going to slow the momentum?

For one, small caps are holding up rather well.

And it did not take much to convince investors that small caps were cold.

"I think small caps will continue to outperform," he said.

In some years, more than three-quarters of the small caps beat the index.

Indeed, the Russell 2000 index of small caps is now down 3 percent this year.

Most fund managers define small-caps as companies with market capitalizations under $1 billion.

As a result, small-caps tend to rebound the most once this selling pressure evaporates.

Does the stumble in small-caps last quarter make the advisers nervous about the overall United States market?

And, he added, "if people really felt good about earnings they would be driving the mid-caps and small-caps higher."

"A lot of new money in the market has gone into mid-caps rather than small-caps because it's easier to put that money to use," he said.

"Small-caps had a pretty doggone good third quarter," he said, "and most likely, they're going to turn in a dynamite fourth quarter."

Small caps can be specified in CSS using "font-variant: small-caps;".

"They're hanging on by a finger," said Claudia Mott, a small-caps analyst at Prudential Securities.

She is staying with mid-cap stocks, she said, because they "have less volatility than small-caps but tend to do well when small-caps do well."

Relatively volatile equities like small-caps and international stocks should be held through mutual funds, rather than in individual stocks, Mr. Jaffe said, because of the diversification that funds provide.

"Small-caps tend to outperform at the beginning of a cycle," said Mr. Sah, 38, who took over sole management of the fund in December after working on a team that ran it for three years.

BODY WASHED UP NEAR SANDSEND, the small-caps headline ran.

This certainly needed to be checked, because companies that have contributed to the most candidates have tended to be among the largest, and large-cap stocks outperformed small-caps during many of the years that the professors studied.

It's also a profitable time to be an arb; Merger Fund, Mr. Green's mutual fund, is up more than 4 percent this year, while the Dow is slightly underwater and small-caps are in the red.

The difference in executive-compensation gains was sharper when stock options, restricted shares and long-term incentives were included: C.E.O. compensation surged by 19.2 percent at small-caps, 13.33 percent at mid-caps and 3.66 percent at the biggest companies.

Jeffrey Dunham, the president of Dunham & Associates Investment Counsel in San Diego, said his clients would probably move into "investment areas that have been out of favor - that includes growth stocks and health care as well as small-caps."