16 small-cap stocks that could get a boost from ETF buying

The Russell family of indexes will add several newly-public companies in March, at which point exchange-traded funds that track the indexes will need to buy shares in those companies. That buying activity could provide a boost to share prices, according to an analysis from Jefferies.

"A number of names could see decent tailwind," the Jefferies analysts wrote. Those 16 stocks are in the table below, along with the number of days over which Jefferies calculates they will see buying pressure.

There are some caveats.

"We are adding to the growing list of concerns regarding small-cap performance moving too far, too fast," the analysts explain.

As of Friday's open, the Russell 2000 is up 8.7% in the year to date, compared to a flat showing for the S&P 500 and a negative one for the Nasdaq .

What's more, companies have been rushing to go public at a pace not seen since 1997 -- eclipsing even the 1999-2000 dot-com bubble.

"When the IPO calendar has been this hot in the past, performance has cooled," Jefferies wrote. "We don't see negative performance but Small does tend to lag over the subsequent 6 and 12 months as investors digest the new names."

Jefferies explains that they calculated "days to buy" like so: "We took the weight of each name across the Russell indexes, multiplied that by our best guess as to how many passive assets are pegged to each index to come up with dollars to buy. We then divide the dollars by its price to come up with shares to buy. We then took the average last 10-days of trading volume to determine the days to buy."