stocks are pointing south as markets continue to get knocked around by russiaukraine headlines and the willtheywon’tthey invade questions gold investors are set to have a pretty decent day at least our call of the day comes from jefferies strategists who offer up more than a dozen smallcap stock picks that they say have momentum and valuation factors on their side smaller companies are in a bit of a tight spot these days with the russell 2000 rut down over 7 on a 12month basis versus a 13 gain for the sp 500 spx though both have lost ground yeartodate prospects for higher interest rates and inflationary pressures can be headwinds for domestically focused companies earlier this month goldman sachs warned that the smallcap index would continue underperforming the sp this year over the last 20 years those stocks have “lagged behind on average in periods when the yield curve was flattening economic growth was strong but decelerating or financial conditions were tightening” said the bank goldman suggested investors look for companies with fast growth high profit margins and moderate valuations back to jefferies where equity strategist steven desanctis and his team say “growthier” smallcap stocks are still pricey and they don’t see any outperformance coming from those in the near term “we sliced ‘growth’ stocks into a few buckets and found that despite having been hammered they are not cheap the underperformance ranks as some of the darkest these stocks have seen since ’00 but they tend to take time to rebound” he said adding that value and cyclical names have better tailwinds what has worked combining momentum and valuation factors to find some smallcap gems a strategy that desanctis and the team said has worked well in the past year or so “valuations have been a real driver of performance while momentum has been gaining momentum” he said jefferies looked for names that moved up the ranks in the first quarter based on an overall momentum rating and still look cheap that group of “buy” rated stock picks include companies such as first watch fwrg advance auto aap and delta air lines dal here’s the team’s chart with the rest nato says russia is misleading the world and instead of pulling troops has added about 7000 backing up claims from a us official and russianbacked separatists in luhansk say ukrainian forces opened fire on that territory several times overnight violating a ceasefire in the earnings spotlight walmart wmt is reporting early along with palantir technologies pltr followed by roku roku shake shack shak dropbox dbx solarwinds swi and fiverr fvrr doordash shares dash are up over 20 after record orders and more than 25 million active users reported by the fooddelivery app in the chip sector nvidia nvda is dropping after a strong forecast and record sales failed to impress investors while applied materials shares amat are rising on record sales and an inline revenue forecast elsewhere in tech cisco stock csco is up after forecastbeating results and upbeat guidance amazon amzn and visa v have settled a feepayment spat with the credit card now accepted across the ecommerce giant’s sites and stores read as investors punish shopify these 15 ecommerce companies are expected to grow sales the most through 2023 weekly jobless claims housing starts and building permits along with the philadelphia federal reserve manufacturing index are all due ahead of the market open later we’ll hear from st louis fed president james bullard and cleveland fed president loretta mester no fan of cryptocurrencies berkshire hathaway brk brk chairman and storied investor charlie munger said the asset class was like a “venereal disease” and warned over us inflation stock futures es00 ym00 nq00 are slipping with bond yields bxtmubmusd10y also falling oil prices cl00 brn00 are tumbling on reports of progress over iranian nuclear talks gold gc00 and the dollar dxy are firmer elsewhere the nikkei jpnik bucked a mostly positive asian session and european stocks xxsxxp have drifted south are retail investors ready to swing their weight around again vanda research’s senior strategist ben onatibia and giacomo pierantoni head of data offered up the following chart they said it shows how retail investors have been consistent net buyers of equities since the covid19 pandemic but that gross volumes the sum of all buy and sell orders have been trending lower since the first quarter “as volumes decreased so did retail investors’ influence on the market recall that retail investors were the marginal price setters in a lot of assets in 2020 evs clean energy tech but became liquity providers in 2021 as retail volumes rise in 2022 institutional investors will be wise to keep a close eye of these flows” said onatibia and pierantoni these were the topsearched tickers on marketwatch as of 6 am eastern thousands of saudi women apply for 30 jobs to drive bullet trains uk gets a rare “red alert” warning over storm eunice and a potential sting 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