IJS

Among US equity factors, growth is still the leader, but the edge is thinning via numbers through Tuesday's close.Fans of small-cap investing will find encouragement in recent trading activity.If coronavirus risk remains muted in terms of reversing the recent US economic rebound, the case for small caps looks bright, or least brighter, relative to the last several years.

BlackRock's iShares unit reduced expense ratios and enacted splits on several of its ETFs.

Earlier this week, we examined the iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF (IWN) as a cheap way for investors to bet on an economic recovery. The IWN trades at half the

The leading performances for the growth and momentum buckets in the US stock market continue to pull ahead, based on a set of exchange-traded funds.Meanwhile, the laggards are falling further behind. At the extreme, the spread between the best and worst year-to-date performances for the factor group is approaching an astonishing 50 percentage points as of the close of trading on September 2.While large-cap growth and momentum are far ahead in this year's horse race, the majority of equity risk factors remain under water for 2020.

There's nothing subtle about the span of year-to-date returns for a broad set of US equity risk factors.At the extreme, the spread between the strongest and weakest performances is a stunning 40 percentage points, based on a set of exchange-traded funds through yesterday's close (Aug. 25).The strongest year-to-date run is currently held by large-cap growth stocks, based on the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF, which is up a sizzling 23.3% so far in 2020.