... there is perhaps a general investing insight that the high ROE firms in the S&P, but outside the giants, are probably a good hunting ground.

This is similar to a screen you posted on the old TMF board (R.I.P.)
"Take only the 90% of the stocks closest to their 52-week high.
Take the top 100 by ROE ...
and those with earnings >0 and book value is < 0.
then of those, top 25 by 5 Yr sales Growth.
"

S&P 500 stocks, take the smallest 490 by market cap.
Of those, take top 10 by ROE.
KMB CLX IRM HD MA AMGN NTAP MSI GDDY FTNT SYY MMM KLAC LII ITW ORCL LMT LLY


Using the 8/13/2025 data from barcharts for the S&P500,
If you replace the ROE sort figure for that category of firm (ROE<0, Current EPS>0, TTM EPS>0) as reported with (say) a fixed 100% proxy ROE, they would be allowed to make the cut.

There are 29 of these.
None of them would make the cut. The #10 stock is GDDY with 189.42 ROE%

You'd probably need to make another sort of these 39, maybe 1 yr or 5 yr sales growth.
But then, CLX (#4 by ROE%) would not make the cut as it's 5Y rev growth% is only 5.7% making it #34.

BTW, IRM is one of those with negative ROE% and BV.

Or will you keep getting your head handed to you if you avoid the few supergigacaps?

For the last few years, the supergigacaps were the place to be. They skunked everything else. That won't last forever, though.
Probably.

Worse, I recall a Ken Fisher column in Forbes somewhere in the early 2000's which said that the supercaps were the place to be. That's about 25 years now, except maybe for the 2008/2009 bear.

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Ah, LLY. One of my screen picks of 5/28/2024. The worst performing stock of the 10, down -18.4%. The only one that is down. The next worst one is up +17.5%