iShares S&P Small Cap 600 Value Fund Declines

iShares S&P Small Cap 600 Value Index Fund (IJS) fell by almost 2% today. In fact, there was a $3 swing in the day’s trading range. A very small portion of the downfall was captured back in after-hours trading, but the stock chart shows an obvious downtrend. What caused the drop and should owners be concerned?

While I don’t own IJS—I’d rather create my own basket of stocks—it is interesting to see what is pulling down this small caps fund as a whole.

One note: the 52-week trading range you’ll see on most sites is misleading. When you pull up the candlesticks, you see that there was a one-day error in May that dropped the stock. However, it’s been progressing in an upward trend nicely for the past 12 months. Any pullbacks have been quickly met with with new demand and higher prices.

According to the official site for IJS, here are the top 10 holdings and how they played out today:

1. East West Bancorp (EWBC) 1.14% holding, down 4.92%today.

2. Piedmont Natural Gas (PNY) 0.86% holding, down 0.99% today.

3. ProAssurance (PRA) 0.86% holding, down 1.6% today.

4. Casey’s General Stores (CASY) 0.83% holding, down about 2.29% today.

5. Acuity Brands (AYI) 0.83% holding, down 0.61% today.

6. Live Nation Entertainment (LYV) 0.82% holding, down 3.20% today.

7. Amerigroup (AGP) 0.80% holding, up 0.19% today—hey, it’s better than nothing.

8. Brunswick (BC) 0.78% holding, down 3.37% today.

9. Emcor Group (EME) 0.76% holding, down 2.15% today.

10. Esterline Techniologies (ESL) 0.71% holding, down 2.23% today.

Those ten stocks account for 8.4% of IJS. They collectively lost 21.17% today. Sure, I could have added up 100 stocks with minor losses and got a larger number. However, look at the individual losses within the top 10 holdings. The top holding dropped almost 5% on its own—and it’s trending downward.

Among its 428 holdings, IJS is very heavy in financials and industrials and fairly heavy in consumer discretionary and information technology. This is represented by the increased stake over the past weeks in East West Bancorp—from 0.73% to 1.14%

About the iShares S&P Small Cap 600 Value Fund

It is a subset of the S&P 600 Index, which consists of small cap stocks that exhibit the strongest value characteristics of the S&P SmallCap 600 Index—this fund represents about 52% of the market cap of the S&P SmallCap 600 Index.