In each of the past three calendar years, small cap stocks in the U.S. have lagged their large cap counterparts by roughly 6-7% per year. This trend accelerated even more dramatically in the first quarter of 2020 as small caps underperformed large caps by over 10%-a magnitude larger than any quarter over the past 40 years, including the golden years of megacap growth leadership in the late 1990s.1
Understandably, investors in 2020 have been concerned that small businesses would be irrevocably damaged by government-mandated lockdowns intended to stem the global COVID-19 pandemic, which was