The Daily Screen: The Best Small-Cap Value Funds

Small-cap value funds have gone from playground pushover to bully this year, and the Daily Screen has singled out a few for you to consider.

First things first. These funds typically invest in companies with market caps below $1.5 billion, with valuations that are cheap relative to the market or their industry peers. With low-tech portfolios and modest valuations, these funds can provide solid shelter from the tech-led selling we're seeing these days -- the average price-to-earnings multiple of the stocks in these funds is around 20, compared with 24.6 for the S&P 500.

Over the past few years, investors have been gaga for big-cap growth funds and other tech-heavy fare, leaving these funds out in the cold until this year when valuation-conscious investors started sniffing around these mostly obscure stocks. So far this year, they're the fifth best-performing U.S. stock fund category with a 7.7% gain, compared with the mostly large-cap S&P 500's 6.3% loss. ...