Small-company stocks have been leading the market rally

— -- Q: Have shares of large or small companies been the leaders in the market's recovery since March 9?

A: One of the most popular ways for investors to analyze stocks is by their size.

Stocks of small companies, generally those with market values less than $1 billion, tend to be riskier than those with large market values of $5 billion or more. Smaller companies often rely heavily on fewer products, have less available cash and are just generally riskier than larger companies.

But that added risk usually comes with a higher potential return. The IFA Small Company index, which mirrors the performance of U.S. companies with small market values, has generated an average annual rate of return of 10.6% since 1928, topping the IFA U.S. Large Company index's 9.2% average annual return during that period.

And since the market's low in March, the tendency of small-company stocks to outperform has continued. You can track this yourself by monitoring how exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that mirror the performance of small and large stocks have done.

Using USATODAY.com's stock charting feature, you can easily compare performances of the large and small-cap ETFs based on a variety of starting points. You'll need to click on the VV ticker in the previous paragraph, then click on the green Charts tab. Choose Go to Java Charting and put the ticker symbol VB in the Compare to Symbol box. Then click on the double arrows. To compare from March 9 put the active cursor on that date and click and hold to today's date.

If you do, you'll see that small-cap stocks have strongly outperformed large caps since March 9. Small-caps are up almost 70% from the year's low, while large-caps are up about 45%.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Click here to see previous Ask Matt columns. Follow Matt on Twitter at: twitter.com/mattkrantz