Mid-caps have a better run than large-caps ::Business Line,

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In a bear market, take shelter in large-caps is the sage advice you usually hear from investment gurus. It didn't work in this market fall, though. Mid-cap stocks have, in fact, managed to outdo the large-cap stocks by a margin, going by the returns posted by the CNX-500 stocks between the market high in November 2010 and end-September this year.

Considering the stocks which suffered a sharp decline of over 50 per cent, from November 5, 2010 to September 30, 2011, eight out of ten were either small-caps or mid-caps.

Karuturi Global, KS Oils and Allied Digital, for instance, are small-cap stocks, sliding between 79 and 88 per cent. In the mid-cap space, stocks such as Bajaj Hindusthan and GVK Power Infra declined almost 65 per cent.

MIDCAP PERFORMERS

Measuring their returns against the broader market's 23.5 per cent fall, mid-cap stocks emerged the best performers. Only 22 per cent of the stocks that fell more than the market belonged to mid-caps.

Three in every ten stocks were large-caps. Large-cap underperformers included the likes of Reliance Power and Neyveli Lignite which fell about 53 per cent each, while SAIL dropped 46 per cent. Further, the number of stocks which declined was more in the large-cap space than in the mid-caps.

With a larger number of stocks that suffered steep declines belonging to the mid-cap space though, the large-cap stocks' average decline of 27 per cent was almost on par with the mid-cap average fall of 26 per cent.

Finally, even as markets suffered heavy losses, a handful of stocks did manage to post gains. And in this space as well, there were more mid-cap stocks than large-caps. About four in every ten stocks that notched up positive returns were mid-caps. The stock of CRISIL, for example, was up 35 per cent, while Bombay Rayon gained 24 per cent even as markets embarked on a downhill ride.