STOCK PERFORMANCE: Growth v. Value Investing for Physicians

BY DR. DAVID EDWARD MARCINKO: MBA MEd CMP™

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SPONSOR: http://www.MarcinkoAssociates.com

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Performance of Growth & Value Stocks

Although many academics argue that value stocks outperform growth stocks, the returns for individuals investing through mutual funds demonstrate a near match. 

Introduction

A 2005 study Do Investors Capture the Value Premium? written by Todd Houge at The University of Iowa and Tim Loughran at The University of Notre Dame found that large company mutual funds in both the value and growth styles returned just over 11 percent for the period of 1975 to 2002. This paper contradicted many studies that demonstrated owning value stocks offers better long-term performance than growth stocks. 

The studies, led by Eugene Fama PhD and Kenneth French PhD, established the current consensus that the value style of investing does indeed offer a return premium. There are several theories as to why this has been the case, among the most persuasive being a series of behavioral arguments put forth by leading researchers. The studies suggest that the out performance of value stocks may result from investors’ tendency toward common behavioral traits, including the belief that the future will be similar to the past, overreaction to unexpected events, “herding” behavior which leads at times to overemphasis of a particular style or sector, overconfidence, and aversion to regret. All of these behaviors can cause price anomalies which create buying opportunities for value investors.

Another key ingredient argued for value out performance is lower business appraisals. Value stocks are plainly confined to a P/E range, whereas growth stocks have an upper limit that is infinite.  When growth stocks reach a high plateau in regard to P/E ratios, the ensuing returns are generally much lower than the category average over time. 

Moreover, growth stocks tend to lose more in bear markets.  In the last two major bear markets, growth stocks fared far worse than value.  From January 1973 until late 1974, large growth stocks lost 45 percent of their value, while large value stocks lost 26 percent. Similarly, from April 2000 to September 2002, large growth stocks lost 46 percent versus only 27 percent for large value stocks. These losses, academics insist, dramatically reduce the long-term investment returns of growth stocks.

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However, the study by Houge and Loughran reasoned that although a premium may exist, investors have not been able to capture the excess return through mutual funds.  The study also maintained that any potential value premium is generated outside the securities held by most mutual funds.  Simply put, being growth or value had no material impact on a mutual fund’s performance.

Listed below in the table are the annualized returns and standard deviations for return data from January 1975 through December 2002.

Index                              Return                         SD      

S&P 500                            11.53%                     14.88%

Large Growth Funds         11.30%                     16.65%

Large Value Funds             11.41%                    15.39%

 Source:  Hough/Loughran Study

The Hough/Loughran study also found that the returns by style also varied over time.  From 1965-1983, a period widely known to favor the value style, large value funds averaged a 9.92 percent annual return, compared to 8.73 percent for large growth funds. This performance differential reverses over 1984-2001, as large growth funds generated a 14.1 percent average return compared to 12.9 percent for large value funds.  Thus, one style can outperform in any time period.

However, although the long-term returns are nearly identical, large differences between value and growth returns happen over time.   This is especially the case over the last ten years as growth and value have had extraordinary return differences – sometimes over 30 percentage points of under performance. 

This table indicates the return differential between the value and growth styles since 1992.

YEARLY RETURNS OF GROWTH/VALUE STOCKS

YearGrowthValue
19925.1%10.5%
19931.7%18.6%
19943.1%-0.6%
199538.1%37.1%
199624.0%22.0%
199736.5%30.6%
199842.2%14.7%
199928.2% 3.2%
2000-22.1%6.1%
2001-26.7%7.1%
2002-25.2%-20.5%
200328.2%27.7%
2004 6.3%16.5%
2005 3.6%6.1%
2006 10.8%20.6%
20078.8%1.5%
2008-38.43%-36.84%
200937.2%19.69%
201016.71%15.5%
20112.64%0.39%
201215.25%17.50%

Source:  Ibbottson.

Between the third quarter of 1994 and the second quarter of 2000, the S&P Growth Index produced annualized total returns of 30 percent, versus only about 18 percent for the S&P Value Index.  Since 2000, value has turned the tables and dramatically outperformed growth.  Growth has only outperformed value in two of the past eight years.  Since the two styles are successful at different times, combining them in one portfolio can create a buffer against dramatic swings, reducing volatility and the subsequent drag on returns. 

Assessment

In our analysis, the surest way to maximize the benefits of style investing is to combine growth and value in a single portfolio, and maintain the proportions evenly in a 50/50 split through regular rebalancing.  Research from Standard & Poor’s showed that since 1980, a 50/50 portfolio of value and growth stocks beats the market 75 percent of the time.

Conclusion

Due to the fact that both styles have near equal performance and either style can outperform for a significant time period, a medical professional might consider a blending of styles.  Rather than attempt to second-guess the market by switching in and out of styles as they roll with the cycle, it might be prudent to maintain an equal balance your investment between the two.

EDUCATION: Books

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Why the Survival and Dominance of Car Manufacturers is Far from Certain

A SPECIAL REPORT

(In case you missed it)

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#12: Vitaliy Katsenelson, Value Investor (invest like Buffett, stocks ...

By Vitaliy Katsenelson CFA

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I am going to share with you excerpts from a research paper I wrote in 2018 about Tesla and electrical vehicles (EVs), which I have turned into a small book for reader convenience (it is available for free, here). I want to share these essays with you today because we are at a pivotal moment for traditional carmakers, and these essays, which I have not updated, present an important thinking framework about the industry.

It is easier to convince shareholders and the board of directors to invest money into new factories when the demand for EVs is growing, even if you are losing money per vehicle. At least there is hope that once you get to scale and perfect new technology, the losses will turn into profits.

However, when the demand for electrical vehicles stutters and your inventory of EVs starts piling up – which is exactly what is happening right now – investing in EVs becomes very difficult (I wrote about it here).

Retreating to what you know, what has worked for almost a century, what doesn’t generate huge losses with every vehicle sold, and what your current workforce is trained for, and comfortable producing, seems like a natural decision. The decisions traditional carmakers will make over the next year or two will be very important for what their future looks like a decade or two from now.
Why the Survival and Dominance of Car Manufacturers is Far from Certain

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource

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More Practitioners, Prognosticators and Portfolio Pain

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 “Altitude Sickness,” or Value Asphyxiation?

vitaly[By Vitaliy N. Katsenelson CFA]

“Asphyxiation is a condition in which the body doesn’t receive enough oxygen.”

That’s how I started another column awhile back , in which I explained how the recent U.S. equity market highs have been creating “altitude sickness,” or value asphyxiation, for investors. If you look down from 30,000 feet, the market is trading at a significant premium to its average long-term valuation, especially if you normalize earnings for sky-high profit margins.

The Trench View

The view from the trenches is not much different. I spend a lot of time looking for new stocks, either by screen or by reading or talking to other value investors. We are all having a hard time finding many stocks of interest. In fact, we’ve been doing a lot more selling than buying.

I often get asked a question: Are we in a bubble? Bubble is a word that has been thrown around a lot lately. There may be an academic definition of what a bubble is — probably something to do with valuations at least a few standard deviations from the mean — but I don’t really care what it is. (Only academics believe in normal distributions.)

The Practitioner’s View

From the practitioner’s perspective, a bubbly valuation occurs when the price-earnings ratio of a company is so high that its earnings will have a hard time growing into investors’ expectations. In other words, the stock is so expensive that investors holding it will find it difficult to realize a positive return for a long time (think of Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems in 2000). There are some bubbly stocks in the market today. Most years you see some, but today there are probably a few more than usual.

We see a lot of overvalued or fully valued stocks. Expectations (valuations) of those stocks have already more than priced in rosy earnings growth scenarios. If these scenarios play out, investors will likely make very little money, as earnings growth will merely offset P/E compression. But here is where it gets interesting: The line between overvalued and bubbly stocks is often very murky. If the economy’s growth is lower than expected or corporate profit margins revert toward the mean (or, in the situation we have today, decline), the return profiles of these stocks will not be substantially different from those of the bubbly ones. Unfortunately for the value-asphyxiated investor, there are a lot of stocks that fall into this overvalued bucket.

It is very hard for investors to remain disciplined and stick to an investment process. Selling overvalued stocks is hard, because every sell decision brings consequent pain as overvalued stocks that are not aware you’ve sold them keep on marching higher. Just as Pavlov’s dog responded to a bell, the pain of selling teaches us not to sell.

More Pain

If that pain were not enough, cash keeps burning a hole in our portfolios. Cash doesn’t rise in value when everything else is rising; thus investors feel forced to buy. When you are forced into a buy or sell decision, the outcome will usually not be good. Forced buy decisions are usually bad buy decisions. Just because a stock looks less bad than the rest of the market doesn’t make it a good stock. Maybe its peer is trading at 23 times earnings and your pick is trading at “only” 19. Such relative logic is dangerous today, because it anchors you to a transitory environment that may or may not be there for you in the future (most likely not).

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An Annoying Phase

We are in the most annoying phase of the investing calendar: the month when every market strategist and his dog have to make a prediction as to what the market will do next year. To be right in forecasting, you have to predict often. And market strategists do. In fact, they predict so often that no one remembers how often their predictions worked out. I am not knocking the prognosticators: That is their job. They predict and sound smart doing it — just like it’s the barber’s job to cut your hair and pretend he is concentrating on not cutting off your ear.

It is your job, however, not to pay attention to the predictors. They simply don’t know. They may have a gut feeling, but that feeling is worth as much as you pay for it — very little. To time the market, you have to forecast what the economy will do, which is also very difficult. The Fed has 450 economists working full time on that (half of them are Ph.D.s, but I am not going to hold it against them), and they have an amazingly poor track record. Then you have to figure out how other market participants will respond to the economics news — and that is incredibly difficult. Let’s say you nailed both of these tasks. You still need to predict the multitude of random events — a few of which may be very large black swans — that will show up in the next 12 months. There is a reason why they are called “random.”

Assessment

Though it is dangerous to drink the market’s Kool-Aid and celebrate, it is not time to be gloomy either. There is good news for all of us: Cyclical bull markets are here to absolve us from our “buy” sins. Not every stock in your portfolio is marching in rhythm to its fundamentals. Indeed, this market has lifted many stocks while divorcing them from their weak fundamentals. This absolution is temporary: Take advantage of it.

ABOUT

Vitaliy N. Katsenelson, CFA, is Chief Investment Officer at Investment Management Associates in Denver, Colo. He is the author of Active Value Investing (Wiley 2007) and The Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley, 2010).  His books have been translated into eight languages.  Forbes called him – the new Benjamin Graham.

Conclusion

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