Category: Company News

Tonight, 33-year-old Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay will make history as the youngest head coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl.

In his two short years with the Rams, McVay has turned a once 4-12 team into a winning organization that recently ended the regular season with a 13-3 record. His success can be attributed not only to the talent of his players and staff, but also to the steps he’s taken to motivate the team.

According to ESPN, anyone who visits the Rams training facility will see four key phrases posted on the walls:

1. “The standard is the standard.”

2. “Situational masters.”

3. “We not me.”

4. “Our rule — be on time.”

The coach says the purpose of these phrases — referred to as “McVayisms” — is to create a culture where you have “core values and beliefs that you think are consistent with the things you want to represent.”

Punter John Hekker says that McVay uses these phrases so often that “every player regurgitates the stuff,” be it around the locker room or in interviews with the media. Center John Sullivan says that he repeats some of the sayings so often that he’s even brought them into his own household.

“My son knows, ‘We not me’ and ‘the standard is the standard,’ and my wife hears that a lot,” he told ESPN.

While mottoes like “we not me” and “our rule — be on time,” are easy enough to grasp, some of McVay’s other sayings are a bit harder to understand if you’re not part of the team.

Safety John Johnson III says that “the standard is the standard” means “we set the bar and there are no excuse,. “It’s hard to explain!” he says. “You just kind of know from experience.”

Running back Todd Gurley II says that “situational masters” means that in addition to talent, it’s important for a player to understand that “you can beat somebody just by knowing the situations of the game.”

McVay’s motivational phrases have created a culture where expectations are clear. In fact, all-pro defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh told ESPN in October that it’s McVay’s leadership style that ultimately led him to sign a one-year, $14 million contract with the Rams.

“There’s different models of being able to coach people, and I think it’s a matter of really looking at it — is it a dictatorship or is it an open communication and transparency?” he said. “A players’ coach is going to be open communication, transparency, have it laid out from the very beginning of what his expectations are.”

With a one-of-kind culture that has translated into a winning team, The New York Times says there is no surprise that other NFL organizations are in a “rush to replicate McVay’s success.”

“It’s certainly humbling and flattering,” McVay said, in regard to the NFL’s search for more younger coaches. But true to his “we not me” outlook, he says that he thinks “more than anything, it’s a reflection of the success the Rams have had.”

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You can stream the Super Bowl online for free, and it doesn’t matter where you are. CBS will offer the game on its website and through the CBS Sports apps on every popular streaming platform.

So, if you end up sitting on some tarmac with only your phone, or if you’ve cut the cord, all you need to do is download the CBS Sports app and open it.

• On an iPhone or iPad, you can download the CBS Sports app for free.
• Here’s the link for the app if you’re on Android.
• If you’re on a computer, you can stream the Super Bowl for free right on the CBS Sports website.
• If you want to watch on Apple TV, Roku or the Amazon Fire TV, just search for the CBS Sports app from your device.
• Finally, if you have a Chromecast, you can stream to your TV by opening the CBS Sports app on your phone and tapping the cast icon (it looks like a little TV.)

The Super Bowl starts at 6:30 p.m. EST.

It’s a dark time for online publishers. This week alone, hundreds of journalists and other employees were laid off by BuzzFeed, Verizon Media Group (which includes HuffPo and Yahoo) and Vice Media.

The perils of digital media are well documented. As advertising dollars shift online, the vast majority of the growth is going to the biggest audience aggregators, mostly Google and Facebook. Some digital media companies focused their attention on viral-potential content that historically did well on Facebook, or plowed big money into video because Facebook and advertisers demanded it, only to find themselves stranded when Facebook shifted priorities or audiences never showed up.

Now, the digital media industry seems focused on two possible solutions:

• Putting up paywalls to generate subscription revenue.
• Merging to gain scale for advertisers and sharing certain costs.

But maybe news organizations should be asking the question that drove Netflix in its infancy. How can I deliver my product in a new way that maximizes customer satisfaction?

Here’s one possibility — it requires cooperation and some polite copying of already existing technology. But it’s not overly complicated.

Imagine a bundled mobile product, for one reasonable price per month, that spits out new stories as they’re published. Algorithms or humans could curate the articles to suit each reader’s interests, promoting the “big” stories that will be conversation-drivers.

In other words, think a subscription Twitter, but each account is a news organization (or subsections of a news organization), not an individual.

There could be different bundles: choose three news sites for $12 a month, five for $15, or all of them for $40, for instance. Initial adoption of such a product may have to come with a Netflix-like enticement — a shockingly low price that can slowly be raised as the years go by. But if you’re in trouble (or have limited upside), you need to think outside the box.

Paying for this “news Twitter” would grant paywall access to all of the stories from those particular news sites. The content would still be available from the publications’ web sites directly, or from social media links, as long as you paid for the bundled subscription. But the idea would be to pay once at a discount, so readers would walk away with subscriptions to (say) The Athletic, New York Magazine and Business Insider in one fell swoop and have access to them in one place.

I don’t think anybody wants to pay 14 different news organizations $4.99 or $9.99 or $12.99 a month, each with separate log-ins and a different username and password that are too easy to forget.

We’re actually seeing the exact opposite of this phenomenon play out with traditional television. Fewer people want to pay $100 for a huge swath of channels (many of which they don’t watch), and consumers want to see the video they’re paying for on their mobile devices.

The traditional pay-TV model was a golden goose for media companies for decades, until Netflix upended it with a much cheaper, more technologically advanced offering: Get the content you want, when you want it, at one low monthly price. Now the largest media companies — Disney, Comcast, CBS, Viacom, Fox, Warner — are all catching up with their own over-the-top services, or getting out of the game altogether by selling or consolidating.

But that proliferation of subscription video services cannot last. It’s only a matter of time before we get a new bundle of streaming services, with better curation of content. Because, again, no one wants to pay for 10 streaming services, each with their own independent passwords and application. It’s clunky and annoying and quickly gets expensive.

The question, then, is can digital media companies figure out a way to keep everyone happy and work together on such a product? General business history suggests this is very difficult. Broad partnerships typically fail. (One benefit to consolidation is there are fewer companies to work with.)

Perhaps working with a third-party aggregation service is necessary. Apple is trying to play this role with its magazine application Texture, but sources say Apple has run into problems with untrusting media organizations that don’t want to hand over the customer billing relationship. Controlling the consumer’s buying decisions is important.

The TV industry dealt with this issue by having periodic re-negotiations between distributors and content originators on price (typically every few years or so), with ratings often driving the conversation. The pay-TV operator ends up with the joys and pains of dealing with the customer while content companies like Viacom and AMC cede control.

The traditional pay-TV model may be eroding, but it’s a great example of a broad partnership that lasted — media companies and distributors played by a set of rules, each side with some leverage, and hammered out agreements year after year.

If digital media companies want to swing big and avoid more rounds of depressing layoffs, they should be thinking of what customers really want. The status quo won’t cut it.

(Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC parent company NBCUniversal and is an investor in BuzzFeed.)

WATCH: How media streamers could take on Netflix

It’s a dark time for online publishers. This week alone, hundreds of journalists and other employees were laid off by BuzzFeed, Verizon Media Group (which includes HuffPo and Yahoo) and Vice Media.

The perils of digital media are well documented. As advertising dollars shift online, the vast majority of the growth is going to the biggest audience aggregators, mostly Google and Facebook. Some digital media companies focused their attention on viral-potential content that historically did well on Facebook, or plowed big money into video because Facebook and advertisers demanded it, only to find themselves stranded when Facebook shifted priorities or audiences never showed up.

Now, the digital media industry seems focused on two possible solutions:

• Putting up paywalls to generate subscription revenue.
• Merging to gain scale for advertisers and sharing certain costs.

But maybe news organizations should be asking the question that drove Netflix in its infancy. How can I deliver my product in a new way that maximizes customer satisfaction?

Here’s one possibility — it requires cooperation and some polite copying of already existing technology. But it’s not overly complicated.

Imagine a bundled mobile product, for one reasonable price per month, that spits out new stories as they’re published. Algorithms or humans could curate the articles to suit each reader’s interests, promoting the “big” stories that will be conversation-drivers.

In other words, think a subscription Twitter, but each account is a news organization (or subsections of a news organization), not an individual.

There could be different bundles: choose three news sites for $12 a month, five for $15, or all of them for $40, for instance. Initial adoption of such a product may have to come with a Netflix-like enticement — a shockingly low price that can slowly be raised as the years go by. But if you’re in trouble (or have limited upside), you need to think outside the box.

Paying for this “news Twitter” would grant paywall access to all of the stories from those particular news sites. The content would still be available from the publications’ web sites directly, or from social media links, as long as you paid for the bundled subscription. But the idea would be to pay once at a discount, so readers would walk away with subscriptions to (say) The Athletic, New York Magazine and Business Insider in one fell swoop and have access to them in one place.

I don’t think anybody wants to pay 14 different news organizations $4.99 or $9.99 or $12.99 a month, each with separate log-ins and a different username and password that are too easy to forget.

We’re actually seeing the exact opposite of this phenomenon play out with traditional television. Fewer people want to pay $100 for a huge swath of channels (many of which they don’t watch), and consumers want to see the video they’re paying for on their mobile devices.

The traditional pay-TV model was a golden goose for media companies for decades, until Netflix upended it with a much cheaper, more technologically advanced offering: Get the content you want, when you want it, at one low monthly price. Now the largest media companies — Disney, Comcast, CBS, Viacom, Fox, Warner — are all catching up with their own over-the-top services, or getting out of the game altogether by selling or consolidating.

But that proliferation of subscription video services cannot last. It’s only a matter of time before we get a new bundle of streaming services, with better curation of content. Because, again, no one wants to pay for 10 streaming services, each with their own independent passwords and application. It’s clunky and annoying and quickly gets expensive.

The question, then, is can digital media companies figure out a way to keep everyone happy and work together on such a product? General business history suggests this is very difficult. Broad partnerships typically fail. (One benefit to consolidation is there are fewer companies to work with.)

Perhaps working with a third-party aggregation service is necessary. Apple is trying to play this role with its magazine application Texture, but sources say Apple has run into problems with untrusting media organizations that don’t want to hand over the customer billing relationship. Controlling the consumer’s buying decisions is important.

The TV industry dealt with this issue by having periodic re-negotiations between distributors and content originators on price (typically every few years or so), with ratings often driving the conversation. The pay-TV operator ends up with the joys and pains of dealing with the customer while content companies like Viacom and AMC cede control.

The traditional pay-TV model may be eroding, but it’s a great example of a broad partnership that lasted — media companies and distributors played by a set of rules, each side with some leverage, and hammered out agreements year after year.

If digital media companies want to swing big and avoid more rounds of depressing layoffs, they should be thinking of what customers really want. The status quo won’t cut it.

(Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC parent company NBCUniversal and is an investor in BuzzFeed.)

WATCH: How media streamers could take on Netflix

Every year, tens of thousands of Americans wait in what they call “medical purgatory” for an organ transplant. In 2018 there were more than 36,529 organ transplants, a number that has risen by 20 percent over the last five years. However, there are far more sick patients waiting on the transplant list — about 114,000 total, according to data from United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which serves as the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network under federal contract. That’s why an average of 8,000 people die every year waiting for the organs they need.

Now researchers, doctors and policymakers are exploring new strategies to increase the supply of organs needed to meet demand. Among the promising pursuits: advancing stem cell research in an effort to heal damaged organ tissue; developing biofabrication techniques in an effort to fast-track the 3D manufacturing of human organs, and using gene-editing techniques to find safe ways to use pig organs for human transplants.

The coordinated movement comes at a time of crisis in America. Rising obesity and diabetes rates is taking a toll on the human body. It is increasing the incidence of kidney disease and a form of fatty liver disease known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). These conditions typically lead to kidney and liver failure in people as young as 30. Even the pediatric population has been affected. For these individuals an organ transplant is their last hope.

“Recognizing the trend, UNOS is looking for ways to widen the donor pool and improve the way organs are allocated for transplantation nationwide,” said Dr. David Klassen, UNOS’ chief medical officer.

Right now it is rewriting distribution algorithms to improve the access of organs geographically. It is also exploring ways that would let transplant centers accept organ donations more quickly.

One strategy being used to address the immediate need is the use of living donors. Last year 19 percent of all transplant surgeries in the United States were from living donors, the highest in 12 years, reports UNOS. In these surgeries donors give a portion of an organ (i.e. liver) or an entire organ such as a kidney to another person whose organ is no longer functioning properly.

Another is broadening the set of medical criteria for organ donations. For example, now hospitals are using livers that are infected with the hepatitis C virus in transplants and then curing patients of the disease with new drugs — i.e. Harvoni, AbbVie and Sovaldi — after surgery. There is even a UNOS-approved program at Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center that transplants organs, such as livers and kidneys, from living donors infected with HIV to patients who already have the virus.

Stepping up to the challenge, “a number of tech companies are working on devices and processes to better preserve and transport organs,” said Elling Eidbo, CEO of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations. As he explained, this is vitally important since many organs — especially lungs and hearts — get damaged or die in transport because of lack of blood supply, time limitations and geographical logistical challenges.

One company that has received FDA approval for a breakthrough device is TransMedics. The company received FDA approval in March for its Organ Care Lung System, the first portable device that maintains lungs in a near-physiologic state outside the body, addressing the limitations of cold storage used today. The machine is designed to replicate human functions as closely as possible so organs can be preserved for a longer period of time.

The process involves attaching the donated lungs to a ventilator, pump and filters. The lungs are maintained at normal body temperature and treated with a solution that contains nutrients, proteins and oxygen, which can reverse lung injury. The technology is being used especially to preserve lungs and hearts that typically have only up to six hours after recovery for use.

OrganOx, a U.K. start-up, has developed a similar machine that is being used to transport livers. The machine called the OrganOx metra device, maintains a liver’s normal body temperature and delivers oxygenated blood, anti-clotting drugs and nutrients to the organ for up to 24 hours. In a recent study funded by the European Commission, the device was used across seven European transplant centers and was shown to reduce tissue injury and improve quality assessment of organs prior to surgery.

The metra machine is a breakthrough since it allows doctors to monitor liver performance in real-time by providing continuous data on such parameters as blood flow, bile production and lactate clearance. In the future, the technology can open the door to further treatment of donor organs, since a longer transplant window could make time for drug or stem cell-based treatments.

“The goal is to double the number of livers that can be used for transplants,” said Dr. Constantin Coussios, co-founder of OrganOx and professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Oxford. The device that has won regulatory approval in Europe, India, Australia and Canada is now being tested in the U.S. in 15 transplant centers. Dr. Coussios hopes to get FDA approval by 2020 for usage of the machine in the United States.

“It offers a way for doctors to test-drive an organ and reduce uncertainty about its viability for a patient,” Dr. Coussios explained. “It also gives the surgeon more time to find the appropriate recipient and plan surgeries. This reduces risk.”

Recognizing how perfusion technology can help in organ assessment and repair before transplant surgery, the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, has forged an agreement with United Therapeutics for them to equip and operate a lung restoration facility by year-end. The facility, called Lung Bioengineering, will use ex vivo lung perfusion machines to assess and treat donor lungs prior to transplant.

“We have already performed 11 lung transplants using this technology,” said Dr. Burcin Taner, chairman of the department of transplantation at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. “In the past, many of these organs would have been deemed unusable organs because of edema, infection and other reasons. This is a great way to boost organ resources and do surgeries earlier, before patients become too sick for a transplant. It will service our center and other transplant centers in the Southeast.”

The organizations also plan to work together on regenerative medicine research — a game-changing field with the potential to heal damaged tissues and organs.

For two years the Mayo Clinic has been doing stem cell research to treat a host of conditions, including blood cancers. Now it is exploring ways to use stem cells to hea

l the brain after a hemorrhagic stroke and regenerate heart tissue and reduce transplant rejection.

Dr. Tushar Patel, dean of research at the Mayo Clinic, is pioneering a new kind of therapy that can be used for the repair and regeneration of organs. He has been exploring how nanoparticles known as extracellular vesicles (EVs) obtained from stem cells can be bioengineered to help in tissue repair.

“EVs are routinely released from cells and play a central role in cell communication, sharing vital information such as RNA and proteins. We are looking at how the human body can use EV from stem cells to assist in tissue repair. This could create a whole new generation of cell-free therapies,” said Patel.

Looking toward the future, scientists are working on breakthroughs that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

One of the most promising areas is the field of xenotransplantation, or cross-species organ transplants. “We are only one or two years away from clinical trials of modified kidney transplants from genetically modified pig models to humans,” said UNOS’ Dr. Klassen.

Xenotransplantation is not entirely novel. Pig heart valves have been used for many years without ill effect and seldom elicit rejection. Some scientists believe whole organ transplants from genetically modified pigs are possible in the near future if immunological and physiological barriers can be overcome. The reason they are targeting this quick-breeding species is because they are anatomically similar to humans and can be gestated and grown for transplant in a relatively short period: six months.

Their goal is to create a future in which designer swine, raised in pathogen-free indoor farms, will serve as spare parts factories for ailing human bodies.

A pioneer in this field is Dr. Joseph Tector, a surgeon-scientist and director of the University of Alabama’s Birmingham’s Xenotransplant Program. He is busy trying to crack the code on how to place pig organs in human bodies. His goal is to overcome immune-system incompatibility and minimize rejection risk by using CRISPR gene-editing techniques to knock out any sugars on the surface of pig cells that will be attacked by human antibodies if the organs are transplanted into human patients. While a biotech start-up eGenesis is also developing technology in this field, Tector says his model is different in that it involves less gene editing of the genome.

“We want to do as little gene editing as possible to reduce risk,” Dr. Tector said. He explained that CRISPR gene editing can be imprecise, and sometimes it can clip DNA in the wrong spot, potentially wiping out tumor-suppression genes in pig donors or human recipients. “The last thing we want is to suppress the immune system so much that it cannot fight infection.”

Why is he dedicated to this approach? “There has been a been a lot of rationing of human organs for transplant but that just determines who lives or who dies,” Dr. Tector says. “As the population grows we need new sources to meet demand.”

Another strategy is to advance human organ and tissue manufacturing. This is the next frontier of medicine. Biofabrication is already a real concept getting close to market.

One company that is helping to turn this lofty goal into an eventual reality is Cellink. The Swedish-based start-up listed on the Nasdaq exchange claims it is the first bioink company in the world. It has created several different varieties of bioink — materials that mimic the natural environment that cells grow in, and which can be mixed with living cells to create functional human tissues with a 3D printer.

The company has created the first community in the bioprinting field that includes 500 universities in 50 countries. “The end goal is to enable organ printers in the future so these vital organs can be manufactured and transplanted,” said Cellink’s founder and CEO, Erik Gatenholm. “Our hope is that it can be a reality in 10 to 15 years.”

As football fans load up on beer this Super Bowl weekend, those in Wyoming will be paying a premium: They have to shell out around $27 to get a case. Meanwhile, New Yorkers only have to spend around $15.

That’s according to new data from deal site Simple Thrifty Living, which found the average price of a 24-pack of beer in every state by comparing prices at national retailers across the U.S. The data accounts for major, domestic beer brands, not craft beer.

When it comes to brews, not all states are created equal. Beer prices are the highest in Alaska, where a 24-pack costs an average of $31.21. Illinois offers the cheapest prices, with an average of just $15.20 per case.

How does your state stack up? Check out the map and the full list below.

Click to enlarge

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $19.65

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $31.21

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $16.23

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $17.97

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $17.86

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $18.06

Average price of a 24-pack of beer: $16.49

For the 35 long days when the government was shutdown, as 800,000 federal workers went without pay, many struggled to stay afloat and feed their families, uncertain when they would find economic stability.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” one woman who was furloughed from her job at the Department of Homeland Security said on a local news broadcast. “You’re working and you have to come to a food bank. But at the same token, I’m not ashamed. It’s the people in Washington D.C. are the ones who should be ashamed.”

As the CEO of Robin Hood, the largest anti-poverty nonprofit in New York City, I watched with pride as anti-poverty interventions we fund stepped up to meet this unexpected crisis.

The New York Food Bank, whose work we have supported for 30 years, turned the Barclays Center in Brooklyn — a sports arena — into a food pantry to support federal employees.

Another of our community partners, the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, saw a 40 percent increase during the shutdown in the number of people they served at their 86th Street Market in New York City, relative to the year before.

But beneath the stories of humanity, generosity, and community, the shutdown showed us how so many Americans who we might think were financially stable — federal employees — had to turn to soup kitchens, food pantries, and emergency loans after just two missed paychecks.

These were not isolated incidents. Families slipping in and out of poverty pervades modern American society.

According to comprehensive new data from the Prosperity Now Scorecard, a staggering 40 percent of American households live one missed paycheck away from poverty. That population of proud, hardworking Americans who we used to call the great American middle class are one unexpected expense, one layoff, one medical emergency, one missed paycheck, one government shutdown away from poverty.

For generations, poverty in American has been a persistent plague on our society. What the data and the realities in communities are showing us now is that we’re on the verge of it becoming a permanent inescapable reality.

In my life, the improbability of my journey reminds me what’s at stake. I grew up on that slippery precipice of poverty in Baltimore and the Bronx in the 1980s and 90s.

Widowed at 31 when my father died from a rare virus, my mother quietly and humbly shouldered the burden of being a single mom, and the economic challenges that come along with it. Throughout my childhood, she worked part-time, low-wage jobs — usually more than one at a time — as she struggled to support my sisters and me.

That all changed in 1993, when she got a job at a nonprofit. For my family, it changed everything. It gave us stability, health insurance, consistency, and consequently — upward mobility.

But my family’s story is all too rare.

At Robin Hood, for 30 years, we’ve worked with communities and followed the data to fight poverty. Our Poverty Tracker with Columbia University shows us that of the nearly 2 million people living in poverty in New York City alone, most of them move in and out of poverty over the course of years, unable to permanently move forward. It shows us how hard it is to permanently escape poverty. It shows us that children are stuck in poverty more persistently than adults.

In the richest country in the history of the world in 2019, can we really accept relegating millions of children to a life of poverty, instability, and uncertainty?

After I became the CEO of Robin Hood a little more than 18 months ago, we launched a strategic planning process designed to assess Robin Hood’s impact given the current demands of the poverty fight.

We spent time in the communities we serve, met with leaders from every community partner we fund, interviewed experts, confronted the data, took stock of our experiences and learnings over three decades in this fight — and we were led to an overwhelming conclusion. Poverty’s permanence is intolerable and unconscionable, and Robin Hood must focus on lifting families across New York City from poverty permanently.

The time we spend every day in resilient communities show us what’s possible if we invest in their future. Our work must focus on making success more probable. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re going to follow the data, partner with everyone we can to find them, and refuse to accept that poverty is permanent.

Wes Moore is the chief executive officer of Robin Hood, one of the largest anti-poverty nonprofits in the nation. He is a bestselling author, combat veteran, and social entrepreneur.

Wes grew up in Baltimore and the Bronx, where he was raised by a single mom. Despite childhood challenges, he graduated Phi Theta Kappa from Valley Forge Military College in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001. He earned an MLitt in International Relations from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. Wes then served as a captain and paratrooper with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, including a combat deployment to Afghanistan. He later served as a White House Fellow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.

So far this year, small market capitalization stocks have seen a big rally.

The iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), which tracks the small cap-focused Russell, has rallied more than 11 percent in 2019, capping off Friday with its third up week in a row. By comparison, the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has advanced 8 percent.

Kevin O’Leary, co-founder of O’Leary Funds and co-host of “Shark Tank,” told CNBC recently that several tailwinds should continue to benefit small caps over large caps this year.

“Tax reforms haven’t had their full effect yet and because the tax code has just been re-written for these all domestic companies. Remember the majority of the sales for the Russell 2000 are all domestic,” O’Leary said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Monday. “The market here still has the benefits of deregulation and tax reform in a way that no other geography has.”

O’Leary said he put his portfolio at a 20 percent weighting to small caps, on the belief they will continue to outperform through the rest of the year.

One factor also benefiting the group is their diversification, added “ETF Edge” host Bob Pisani. While the SPY ETF’s top 10 holdings represent 21 percent weighting, the IWM ETF’s top 10 represent less than 3 percent.

“There are a lot more stocks in the portfolio obviously,” said Dave Nadig, managing director of ETF.com. “Part of the problem with the big indexes we talk about – the S&P 500, the SPY — they tend to actually get polluted, if you will, with a lot of mid-cap names so you have to really look hard to find some purity in your large and small-cap exposure.

He added: “At least with something like the IWM, the iShares small-cap, you’re getting that pure-small cap side of the equation.”

The IWM ETF’s top holdings include Integrated Device Technology, Five Below, Etsy, and Planet Fitness.