An historic rally in share prices for smaller U.S. companies has slowed sharply in April after six months of strong gains, leading many investors to worry that the stock market as a whole may have already priced in a strong rebound from the pandemic. “The easy money has been made for small caps and for the market overall,” said Doug Foreman, chief investment officer of fund manager Kayne Anderson Rudnick, who expects the broad U.S. market will offer “single-digit returns” for the rest of 2021. Over the last year, the 86.7% gain for the Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks has trounced the 48.8% gain for the large-cap S&P 500 index, according to Refinitiv data.
