Fox Business Sep 20, 2026
With Ian Cassel, Founder of MicroCapClub
Microcap stocks have beaten large caps by 200 to 300 basis points a year for more than a hundred years, Ian Cassel says, and 87% of the global stocks that rose tenfold over the past decade started in that part of the market.
The money and the coverage are in the opposite place. Cassel's argument is that the corner of the market almost nobody researches is the corner that produced most of the returns.
"And the crazy thing is that most people do not even know that. We are all too obsessed with Tesla, Nvidia, to care about the bulk of the outperformance coming from microcap stocks."
Ian Cassel, founder of MicroCapClub, on Fox Business, has bought nothing but microcap companies for his whole career, lived off his own portfolio before he ran money for anyone else, and has just published a book about it called Stock Picker.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 3 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Microcaps have beaten mid, small and large caps by 200 to 300 basis points a year, measured over a hundred years
They are ahead again this year, which he says is not the reason to own them
87% of the global stocks that rose tenfold in ten years started as microcaps, on a study of every listed company in the world
Cassel's explanation for why that is not common knowledge is that everyone is watching Tesla and Nvidia instead
Warren Buffett and most of the famous stock pickers started in microcap, and Cassel says that is not a coincidence
He has moved from picking the companies to advising the people who run them
1. A Century Of Winning
The host's framing was that microcap outperformance is not a recent fashion, and asked why the category is still under-owned when the record is that long and more money is arriving now.
Cassel agreed that microcaps are ahead again this year, and then moved the argument off this year entirely.
The edge is 200 to 300 basis points a year, and it is a hundred years long
You're talking about 200 to 300 basis points of outperformance over a hundred years
Ian Cassel
His second piece of evidence is a career pattern rather than a data set. Warren Buffett and the other famous stock pickers, he said, all started out in microcap, and there is a reason they did.
2. Where 10x Stocks Start
The host raised a figure he said he had not known: a large share of the global stocks that rose tenfold over the past ten years began as microcaps. Cassel confirmed it and gave the source, a piece of research out of the United Kingdom that screened every listed company in the world over a ten-year window and pulled out the ones that "shot up 1,000 percent or more".
Almost nine in ten of the decade's biggest winners were microcaps first
and sure enough, 87 percent originated out of the microcap ecosystem
Ian Cassel
What Cassel thinks about that number is less about the number than about who has seen it. His answer for why it is not common knowledge is that the audience is looking somewhere else.
The attention is on the megacaps, and the returns were somewhere else
And the crazy thing is that most people do not even know that. We are all too obsessed with Tesla, Nvidia, to care about the bulk of the outperformance coming from microcap stocks.
Ian Cassel
The host added that the appeal is the obvious one, finding the small company that turns into a giant, and that those companies are out there.
3. The Value-Added Job
The host congratulated Cassel on his new book, Stock Picker, said he liked the bonus chapter, and asked what he means by the distinction in it between a value investor and a value-added investor.
Microcap is the only thing he has ever done
as a microcap investor, and it's all I've ever done
Ian Cassel
The book traces the route: an unknown individual investor, then a full-time private investor living off his own portfolio, then a fund manager. What changed along the way is what he does after he buys. He said his strategy now leans on the standing he has built in the sector, which lets him give advice to the management teams of the small, obscure companies he owns, with the aim of producing a better outcome than the stock would have delivered on its own.
Bonus Insights
The segment's news hook was small business, not small caps
The show came to Cassel off a report earlier that day in which a chief executive said small businesses are in what he called a mini-boom.
He was asked for a name and the clock beat him
The host raised a stock he said had made a nice move recently and looked to him as though it was about to turn higher. There was no time to go into it, and he said he wanted the idea on record so the show could come back to it.
Cassel's bottom line is that the part of the market with the longest record of beating everything else is the part with the least attention on it, and that a hundred years of a two-to-three point annual edge, plus 87% of the decade's tenfold winners, is what that inattention has been worth.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
MicroCapClub (The community he founded for microcap investors, and the credential the show introduced him with)
Tesla and Nvidia (His examples of where the attention goes instead, while the returns he is describing were being made in companies nobody was watching)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Stock Picker – Ian Cassel (His new book, which the host raised along with its bonus chapter. It covers his own route from unknown individual investor to fund manager and the distinction he draws between investing in a company and adding something to it)
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