Tag Archives: falling knives

We left off at Regression to the Mean Part II here:http://csinvesting.org/?p=10996

We skip Chapter Six (for now) and focus on Chapter 7 in DEEP VALUE: Catch a Falling Knife: The Anatomy of a Contrarian Value Strategy

In Search of Un-Excellence

The authors identified 36 publicly traded “excellent companies” on the basis of out-performance in six criteria, measured from 1961 to 1980.

1. Asset growth
2. Equity growth
3. Return on total capital
4. Return on equity
5. Return on sales
6. Market to book value

Then an investment analysts, Michelle Clayman, identified 39 publicly traded “un-excellent companies” which ranked in the bottom third of all Peters and Waterman’s criteria from 1976 to 1980.   These “in search of disaster” companies outperformed 24.4% pa over five years vs. 12.7% for the “excellent” companies.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Excellence
• PW in search of unexcellence_Clayman Must read!
• Revisiting In Search of Excellence a PM Perspective Must read!

The good companies under-perform because the market overestimates their future growth and future return on equity and, as a result, accords the stocks overvalued price-to-book ratios; the converse is true of the poor companies.

Over time, company results have a tendency to regress to the mean as underlying economic forces attract new entrants to attractive markets and encourage participants to leave low-return businesses. Because of this tendency, companies that have been good performers in the past may prove to be inferior investments, while poor companies frequently provide superior investment returns in the future.”

Note pages 128 to 136 in DEEP VALUE: Tables 7.1 to 7.9

Stocks in the Contrarian Value portfolios were cheaper than the comparable Glamour portfolios on every metric but on a Price-to-Earnings basis, possibly because the earnings in those portfolios were so weak.

First, valuation is more important than growth in constructing portfolios.

Cheap, low growth portfolios systematically outperform expensive, high-growth portfolios, and by wide margins.  It seems that the uglier the stock, the better the return, even when the valuations are comparable. Oppenheimer found in a study on Ben Graham Net/Nets that loss making and non-dividend paying net/nets outperform profitable, dividend-paying net/nets. Ben Graham Net Current Asset Values A Performance Update

In almost any study, the cheap, hated, ugly, least-admired, and poorly performing stock outperforms the high-growth, glamour stocks.

• DVI and Unexplained Returns_Carlisle
• VI for Grownups Powerpoint
• Value-Investing-for-Grown-ups-by-Damodaran (counter-point!)
• Admired vs Spurned Stocks
• Excellence Revisited Clayman
• Analysts Overestimating Earnings
• Are Well Managed Companies Good Investments

What these studies demonstrate is that mean reversion is a pervasive phenomenon, and one that we don’t intuitively recognize. Our untrained instinct is to pursue the glamorous stock, the high-growth stock, the story stock, the excellent stock, the admired stock, the A+ stock, or even the profitable net net, but study after study shows that this instinct leads us to under-perform. Buying well-run companies with good businesses at bargain prices seems to make even more sense. The research shows , however, that the better investment–rather than the better company–the value stock, the scorned, the unexcellent, the Ds, the loss-making net nets.  And the better value stock, according to Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny’s research is the low-no-growth value stock, what they describe as “contrarian value,”

What is clear is that value investing in general, and deep value (buying the ugliest of ugly) in particular, is exceedingly behaviorally difficult. It is counter-intuitive and against instinct, which is why many investors shy away from it.

Lecture by Toby Carlisle on Deep Value Investing

Next Lesson:

We will finish up this chapter by covering The Broken-Leg Problem. Please give this chapter a close study–the conclusions are extremely COUNTER-INTUITIVE and the opposite of what most investors look for.  We are at the heart of deep value investing.