Hargreave warns of difficult year ahead for small-cap sector

Giles Hargreave has predicted small caps could suffer a difficult year as investors prepare for a weaker equity market in 2015.

The Hargreave Hale co-founder and Marlborough manager runs  three small-cap portfolios: the £853m Marlborough Special Situations, £100m Nano-Cap Growth, and £424m UK Micro-Cap Growth funds. After a stellar 2013, small caps were negatively hit in the first half of 2014 as investors abandoned the sector in search of more robust large-cap stocks. The UK Smaller Companies sector is one of the top-performing sectors over three years, returning 66.4%, beaten only by the North American sector. However, over one year it has returned just 1.5%. Hargreave said: "I am not saying there wil...