What you're really looking for in a small cap company is the opportunity to invest in a

Home Depot when it is a couple of shops in Atlanta or at Chipotle when it is 400 stores, most of which seem to be concentrated around

Denver.

So there is absolutely something to be said for identifying companies that have a chance of growing

large and understanding that in a lot of those situations the company is going to disappoint you.

I'm Mary Long and that's Bill Mann,

director of small cap research at the Motley Fool.

Ricky Mulvey caught up with Bill to check in on, you guessed it, small cap stocks.

They also discuss the advantages of being able to play below the $1 billion barrier,

truths in horse racing and investing,

whether institutional attention is a positive or a negative,

and a company that pays dividends in dollars and snacks. It's the small cap show, so let's talk about small caps with the Motley

Fool's director of small cap investing.

It's Bill Mann.

Thanks for doing this again with me.

How you doing, pal? I'm doing pretty well. It's, you know, every so often we get together where I have a list of very specific questions about very specific companies that we normally don't talk about on the show.

And I invent very specific answers that's perfect for everyone.

And I want to get there, but I also, you know, investing in the smaller companies, the small caps, this is sort of the black diamond skiing

if you will of stock investing so I want to set the table a little bit

with some macro stuff so just so someone who's newer to investing can kind of get their

expectations right and we got to be honest. It's been a rough

stretch for the small cap class. The Russell 2000 is up about 30% over the past five years,

...