Small-cap manager Doenges on why tiny stocks have struggled while market has peaked

Conrad Doenges, chief investment officer at Ranger Investment Management — manager of the Ranger Small Cap and Ranger Micro Cap funds — says that smaller companies have suffered as an asset class because corporate earnings have struggled to meet growth expectations. While there is an expectation that small companies will benefit from a cut in interest rates and from deregulation policies from the government, Doenges says in the Market Call that earnings expectations remain muted, so the long awaited rally in small caps could come, but be less than investors have been waiting for.

Jeffrey Ptak, managing director at Morningstar Research Services, discusses his recent research into funds that have massive amounts of success to become darlings of the media and of investors, and how they tend to disappoint just after the flood of money comes in. While the results are not surprising, Ptak says it is more than just the typical "regression to the mean" that knocks these hot funds from the ranks of top performers.

Allison Hadley discusses a mid-year tariff survey from Bid-on-Equipment.com which showed that 1 in 5 Americans are stockpiling goods trying to beat price hikes, even though they mostly had to guess on which goods to purchase until tariff policies were firmed up. The survey also showed that nearly 80 percent of consumers are changing their spending habits, mostly by cutting back, which could be a bad sign for the economy moving forward.