Interaction of Long-only Value and Size

Does the finding from long-short factor analysis that the value premium is stronger among small stocks than large stocks hold for long-only value portfolios? In his April 2022 paper entitled “Long-Only Value Investing: Does Size Matter?”, Jack Vogel investigates interactions between the value premium and market capitalization for U.S. and international stocks. The steps in his main analysis are to each year on June 30:

• Group the 3,000 largest U.S. stocks by market capitalization with non-zero market value of equity into the 1,000 largest firms (large-cap) and the 2,000 smallest (small-cap).
• Rank each group into thirds (terciles), fifths (quintiles) or tenths (deciles) based on each of: (1) book-to-market ratio (B/M); (2) earnings-to-price ratio (E/P); (3) free cash flow-to-price ratio (FCF/P); (4) earnings before interest and taxes-to-total enterprise value ratio (EBIT/TEV); and, (5) the composite rank of these four ratios.
• Measure average monthly returns over the next year of the top ranks based on either equal weights (EW) or value weights (VW).

Using the specified accounting data and stock prices for a broad sample of U.S. firms since July 1973 and for a comparable sample of international developed market firms since January 1994, all through December 2020, he finds that: (more…)