Value Premium

Is the value premium so fundamental that its exists generally among stock markets? In their recent paper entitled “Value versus Growth: Australian Evidence”, Philip Gharghori, Sebastian Stryjkowski and Madhu Veeraraghavan test the abilities of indicators based on several alternative definitions of “value” to explain the cross-sectional variation in stock returns in Australia. Specifically, they test book-to-market value ratio (B/M), sales-to-price ratio (S/P), cash flow-to-price ratio (C/P) and earnings-to-price ratio (E/P). They also compare the predictive powers of these value indicators to those of size and debt-to-equity ratio (D/E). Using firm financial data for 1/92-12/04 and associated monthly stock prices for 1/93-12/04 (a total of 137,139 firm-month observations), they find that: Keep Reading

Do stocks that are difficult to trade (have low liquidity) offer abnormal returns as compensation for the risk of getting out of them? Or, is this reward-for-risk intuition unsound? In their recent paper entitled “Cross-Sectional Stock Returns in the UK Market: the Role of Liquidity Risk”, Soosung Hwang and Chensheng Lu investigate the relationship between liquidity and return for individual stocks, with focus on the link between liquidity and the value premium. They introduce a new measure of liquidity based on the absolute change in stock price per unit of turnover, with turnover calculated as the fraction of firm market capitalization traded. Using price, trading volume, capitalization and fundamentals data for UK stocks over the period 1987-2004, they conclude that: Keep Reading

How much of a long-term total return advantage do investors perceive for high book-to-market (value) stocks over low book-to-market (growth) stocks? Is this perceived premium stable over time? In their April 2007 paper entitled “The Expected Value Premium”, Long Chen, Ralitsa Petkova and Lu Zhang measure investor expectations for the value premium based on economic fundamentals rather than noisy historical returns. They assume that dividend growth rate equals capital gain rate over long periods, and that the top (bottom) 20% represents a high (low) the book-to-market ratio. Using monthly data for the period 1945-2005, they find that: Keep Reading

Reader Richard Beddard, editor of Interactive Investor, flagged a series of three studies by Keith Anderson and Chris Brooks on approaches to enhancing the value premium via empirical analysis of the price-earnings ratio (P/E) calculated with lagged earnings. One study seeks to optimize value indication based on the extent and weighting of historical earnings used in the P/E calculation. The second study seeks to concentrate the value premium by decomposing P/E into components related to market, firm size, industry and company-specific factors. The third study combines the findings of the first two and examines the returns for the extreme tails of the enhanced P/E distribution. All three studies use earnings and stock return data for a broad range of UK companies (excluding the smallest) for the period 1975-2004. Summaries of the three studies follow. Keep Reading

What causes the value premium, a rational risk factor or an irrational overreaction? If the latter, who overreacts and to what? In his February 2007 paper entitled “Institutional Investors, Intangible Information and the Book-to-Market Effect”, Hao Jiang investigates a connection between the value premium and the trading behavior of institutional investors. Specifically, he tests whether institutions overreact to intangible information (that not derived directly from firm accounting measures). Using data on returns, accounting fundamentals and institutional ownership encompassing 49,164 firm-years over the period 1981-2004, he concludes that: Keep Reading

Attempting to follow long stock market trends is a common investment approach, with much guru attention focused on calling long-term tops and bottoms. Is this approach meaningful for investors as an avenue to improve upon buy-and-hold performance? In the December 2006 version of his paper entitled “Analyzing Regime Switching in Stock Returns: An Investment Perspective”, Jun Tu investigates the potential importance to investors of exploiting differences between bull and bear markets within a Bayesian framework that accommodates considerable uncertainty. Using monthly value-weighted stock return and volatility data for July 1963 to February 2006 (512 observations), he finds that: Keep Reading

Can investors/traders amplify excess returns by combining value investing with stock repurchase activities? In other words, do companies with low price-fundamentals ratios that buy back stock outperform value companies in general? In their recent paper entitled “Corporate Financing Activities and Contrarian Investment”, Turan Bali, Ozgur Demirtas and Armen Hovakimian examine returns for investing strategies that combine value indicators and stock repurchase/issuance activities. Using monthly return data and company financial statements for the period May 1972 to April 2002, they find that: Keep Reading

Are there investing/trading strategies that can turn stock price noise into alpha? More specifically, are there types of stocks for which the noise has a systematic effect on price? In the October 2006 draft of their paper entitled “Does Noise Create the Size and Value Effects?”, Robert Arnott, Jason Hsu, Jun Liu and Harry Markowitz model the cross-sectional effects of mean-reverting noise on randomly walking stock values. Noise (for example, from overreacting, informationally challenged and/or liquidity-driven investors/traders) introduces random transients of inefficiency. Based on this model, they conclude that: Keep Reading

Are value (growth) investors stolid conservatives (wild risk-takers)? If so, is there a way to trade on the difference in behavioral preferences? In their September 2006 paper entitled “Risk Aversion and Clientele Effects”, Douglas Blackburn, William Goetzmann and Andrey Ukhov compare the risk preferences of value and growth investors by examining: (1) option prices for pairs of value-growth indexes, and (2) funds flows for value and growth mutual funds. They further investigate whether any profitable options trading strategies devolve from the difference in risk preferences. Using recent data for five value-growth index pairs and for several value and growth mutual funds, they find that: Keep Reading

If noise is a significant component of stock prices, does a portfolio that favors large market capitalization stocks automatically underperform? In the May 2006 draft of their paper entitled “Pricing Noise, Rejecting the CAPM and the Size and Value Effects”, Robert Arnott and Jason Hsu examine the implications of a very simple model that assumes stock prices deviate from fundamental value based on a single source of unknown risk (noise). They assume the deviations revert to a mean of zero, with no long-term effect on stock returns. Based on this model, they conclude that: Keep Reading