You do not want small.
You want small and good.
01
The raw size premium is a composition trap. A plain small-cap index buys the whole bucket, junk included, and the junk is the headwind. Small on its own is not the edge.
02
The edge is small and high quality. Profitable, stable, low on debt. Strip the junk and the premium roughly doubles and steadies. The same lesson value and momentum learned years ago.
03
This is a screen, not a hunch. You cannot eyeball junk out of a 500-name universe. A rule filters on quality every rebalance, without your mood getting a vote.
Small caps were never the free lunch or the trap. The junk inside them was. Own the ones worth owning and let a rule throw the rest back.