Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Efficient Market Analysis in relation to a measure for Quality

Stocks with a Value Line Safety Rank* of 3, 4 & 5 contribute to our performance measures for the Under- and Overvalued stock screens.  Stocks with a Rank of 1 or 2 do not contribute to any appreciable amount. The latter are characterized as having above average market capitalization and yield.  They account for 35 % of the observations  in our monthly analysis of 500 equities over the last 11 years. 



Using the quartile rankings for Valuation Return/Risk (VR) and the ratio of Estimated earnings/ Normalized earnings (E/M),  we compare the average of next month's Relative Strength for quartiles 1,1 (Overvalued) vs 4,4 (Undervalued).  As shown in the first example, the average Undervalued stock outperforms the S&P 500 by 44 basis points while the Overvalued underperform by 6 bp. The resulting spread of 49 bp translates into an annual 6.10%.

 

Screening for Safety Rank of 1 and 2 only reduces the spread to only 0.01% or 0.13% pa. This strongly suggests that, on average, these stocks are more efficiently priced. 

Screening for Safety Rank of 3, 4 and 5 only improves the spread  to 0.57% or 7.03% pa.  The rank of 3 alone, which has 58% of the observations, has a spread which is even higher at 0.63% or 7.84% pa suggesting that the middle ground, in terms of quality is the most inefficiently priced. 

Robert L. Colby
November 11th 2015


* The Safety Rank is computed by averaging two other Value Line indexes the Price Stability Index and the Financial strength Rating. Safety Ranks range from 1 (Highest) to 5 (Lowest).  - Value Line