here to answer that question and more is jay kaplan, portfolio manager and principal at the reus funds. mr. kaplan, welcome. why are the small companies outpacing the big blue chips by so much and can they continue to? >> well, you know, it's been a very good year, like you've talked about. because interest rates have been zero, and we've had economic growth in the u.s. albeit slow, but economic growth. with those two things together, that's been very good for stocks. been very good for small caps. if you go back to the spring, when the fed started to talk about tapering, the implication there was that the economy would grow even faster, the u.s. economy in particular. and small cap stocks are very much leveraged to the u.s. economy so the market took that as a signal to keep the small cap stocks going up, and they performed better than the rest since then. >> all right, so to follow on that line of thinking, if the fed is now saying that it's going to hold off on the tapering plans of the stimulus, that would mean that the economy is slowing down a bit, so small cap stocks shouldn't p

jay kaplan, principal at the reus funds. >>> only four days left for congress to reach a deal on legislation to keep the federal government up and running. but it won't be easy. house speaker john boehner had harsh words for president obama today, even as he urged fellow lawmakers in the republican party to be flexible in crafting a deal. >> our president says "i'm not going to negotiate." well, i'm sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. we're not going to ignore washington's spending problem. and we're not going to accept this new normal of a weak economy, no new jobs and shrinking wages. >> john joins us from washington. john, president obama was also out speaking today. what did we learn from him? >> he said he was not going to negotiate, the very thing that john boehner was reacting to, which is why that race to avoid a shutdown was kind of like a race with cement shoes on. nobody moved. there was no action in the estimate. we're still waiting to see a final resolution of the extended government spending in the senate, then kick it back to the house. john boehner said today that he's

here to answer that question and more is jay kaplan, portfolio manager and principal at the reus funds. mr. kaplan, welcome. why are the small companies outpacing the big blue chips by so much and can they continue to? >> well, you know, it's been a very good year, like you've talked about. because interest rates have been zero, and we've had economic growth in the u.s. albeit slow, but economic growth. with those two things together, that's been very good for stocks. been very good for small caps. if you go back to the spring, when the fed started to talk about tapering, the implication there was that the economy would grow even faster, the u.s. economy in particular. and small cap stocks are very much leveraged to the u.s. economy so the market took that as a signal to keep the small cap stocks going up, and they performed better than the rest since then. >> all right, so to follow on that line of thinking, if the fed is now saying that it's going to hold off on the tapering plans of the stimulus, that would mean that the economy is slowing down a bit, so small cap stocks shouldn't p