Fundamental Valuation

Is company financial leverage a useful indicator of future stock returns? In their October 2010 paper entitled “Would You Follow MM or a Profitable Trading Strategy?”, Brian Baturevich and Gulnur Muradoglu test company leverage (gearing ratio) as a predictor of stock outperformance, controlling for market capitalization, price-to-earnings ratio, market-to-book value ratio and beta. At the beginning of May each year, they construct ten equally weighted portfolios ranked on gearing ratio as of the end of the preceding December and hold the portfolios for three years. They further sort each of these portfolios into ten sub-portfolios ranked on controlling variables as of the end of the preceding December (creating 100 sub-portfolios). Using stock return and accounting data for 413 non-financial S&P 500 companies over the period May 1985 through April 2004, they find that: Keep Reading

What are the implications for investors of a trend toward strategic and tactical allocation to index proxies (exchange-traded funds and derivatives) rather than individual securities? The July 2010 paper entitled “On the Economic Consequences of Index-Linked Investing” by Jeffrey Wurgler provides an overview of the effects of index-linked investing on stock prices, risk-return trade-offs, investor portfolio allocation decisions and fund manager skill assessments. The September 2010 paper entitled “Index Investment and Financialization of Commodities” by Ke Tang and Wei Xiong investigates the effects of increased investing during the last decade in commodity indexes. The October 2010 paper entitled “The Financialization of Commodity Futures Markets or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Index Funds” by Scott Irwin and Dwight Sanders surveys research on the impact of commodity index fund growth on commodity price behavior. Using results of prior research and recent data on indexation investment levels, index returns and component asset returns, these papers find that: Keep Reading

Does high-frequency trading amplify noise and thereby reduce the signal-to-noise ratio in stock returns? In his August 2010 paper entitled “The Effect of High-Frequency Trading on Stock Volatility and Price Discovery”, Frank Zhang examines the effect of high-frequency trading on stock price volatility and on incorporation of fundamental news into price. He defines high-frequency trading as that driven by fully automated trading strategies with very high trading volume and extremely short holding periods ranging from milliseconds to minutes and possibly hours (typically not overnight). He estimates the volume of high-frequency trading as the residual after accounting for institutional and individual investor activities. Using price, trading and institutional holdings data for a broad sample of U.S. stocks from the first quarter of 1985 through the second quarter of 2009, he finds that: Keep Reading

Conventional wisdom is that company management can maximize stock price by issuing weak guidance for future earnings that sets low expectations, and then reporting earnings that beat the low expectations. Does evidence support this belief? In their September 2010 paper entitled “The Stock Price Effects from Downward Earnings Guidance Versus Beating Analysts’ Forecasts: Which Effect Dominates?”, Lynn Rees and Brady Twedt investigate the net effect on stock price of downward earnings guidance that enables a subsequent positive earnings surprise. Using a sample of 8,635 guidance-earnings observations for 2,751 firms during 1993 through 2006, along with a matched control sample, they find that: Keep Reading

Both stock price momentum and asset growth rate exhibit empirical value as return predictors for individual stocks. Does combining these indicators offer enhanced value to investors? In their September 2010 paper entitled “Firm Expansion and Stock Price Momentum”, Peter Nyberg and Salla Pöyry investigate the interaction between firm-level asset growth (change in balance sheet total assets) and stock price momentum. Specifically, they measure returns for a monthly strategy that buys (sells) the prior winners (losers) within groups of stocks sorted first on on asset growth rates and then on 11-month past returns with skip-month. Using data for a broad sample of U.S. firms listed on NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ over the period 1964-2006, they find that: Keep Reading

Two charts added to “Market Models”, a backtest of the 6-month forecasts and a current valuation map, offer context for the projections from the Reversion-to-Value (RTV) Model and the Real Earnings Yield (REY) Model of the U.S. stock market.

Do complex valuation metrics outperform simple ones in predicting stock returns? In their July 2010 paper entitled “The Sophisticated and the Simple: The Profitability of Contrarian Strategies from a Portfolio Manager’s Perspective”, Daniel Giamouridis and Chris Montagu compare and contrast several simple and sophisticated valuation metrics, with focus on those of interest to equity portfolio managers. They consider three simple metrics: (1) forward price-earnings ratio (PE); (2) Book Yield (book price per share divide by share price); and, (3) Fair PE, derived from expected earnings growth and market capitalization. They consider sophisticated metrics as generated by two models: (1) the Residual Income Model (RIM), a function of current book value plus residual income; and, (2) the real options model (ROM), a convex function of earnings and book value. Using monthly firm fundamentals and return data for approximately 450 stocks that have been or are constituents of the MSCI Europe Index during January 1990 to April 2010, they find that: Keep Reading

Does unreliability of the relationship between reported earnings and cash flow affect stock valuation? In the July 2010 version of their paper entitled “The Accrual Volatility Anomaly”, Sati Bandyopadhyay, Alan Huang and Tony Wirjanto investigate whether the market penalizes firms that consistently report earnings that are different from cash flows, as measured by accrual volatility. They define accrual volatility as the standard deviation of the ratio of accruals to sales over the past 16 quarters. They focus on total accruals, defined as changes in working capital minus deprecation and amortization.Using quarterly accounting data and monthly stock returns for a broad sample of U.S. stocks over the period 1976-2008, they find that: Keep Reading

In their June 2010 book Capital Rising: How Capital Flows Are change Business Systems All Over the World, authors Peter Cohan and Srinivasa Rangan mine lessons from 47 case studies to “describe the phenomenon of capital flows, present new ways to think about what causes them to rise and fall, and describe ways that our readers can profit from this framework.” Specifically, in Chapter 7 (“Implications for Capital Providers”) they argue “that analyzing a country’s EE [Entrepreneurial Ecosystem] is essential for capital providers to maximize investment returns” and provide a six-step methodology to “help capital providers to sniff out the best opportunities…” The six steps are: Keep Reading

In his May 2010 book Buying at the Point of Maximum Pessimism: Six Value Investing Trends from China to Oil to Agriculture, author Scott Phillips “introduces a half dozen investment themes that should maintain their fundamental appeal over the next five to ten years. The purpose of this book is to answer the question of what to buy during future bouts of market volatility. In sum, these themes could be thought of as CliffsNotes to be used in preparation for future tests in the stock market. These themes should help investors, at a minimum, inventory a list of investment ideas that may be applied over the years to come.” Some notable ideas from the book are: Keep Reading