Which small cap funds have the worst returns right now?

The specific names change every few months, so the honest answer is a method, not a list: open the small cap category page and read the 1-year column against the 3- and 5-year columns side by side. A weak 1-year number on its own is usually the small-cap cycle — the whole category swings hard — not proof that a fund is broken.

A laggard is only a genuine drag when it's weak across all three horizons and on downside quality too (a low Sortino ratio means it fell harder than it earned). A fund with a poor 1-year but a strong 5-year record and healthy Sortino is often just out of style — punishing it for one bad year is how investors end up buying high and selling low. Also watch fund size: very large small-cap funds can struggle to deploy money in genuinely small companies.

If what you really want is small caps that hold up when markets fall, the steadiest funds by beta (market sensitivity) are below. This is research, not investment advice.