BUYER BEWARE: Not All Value Investments Are Created Equal

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You need to keep an eye on your value investments; not all of them are created equal. In The Wall Street Journal, James Mackintosh examines how stocks trading at levels one wouldn’t traditionally consider normal for “value” shares can still end up in funds labeled “value.” He writes:

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This should have been a great year for contrarian investors. The 50 stocks in the S&P 500 that fell the most last year lost an average of 31%, then rebounded a startling 56% this year. Simply buying the losers at the end of December was a winning strategy.

But contrarian investors don’t usually just buy what fell the most, since that’s historically been a losing strategy. Stocks have momentum, so falling stocks tend to keep falling for a while. Instead, contrarians buy shares that are cheap on some measure of price compared with the underlying fundamentals of the company, a widely followed strategy known as value investing.

Exactly what measure to use—price to sales, price to book, price to cash flow, estimated or reported—remains a point of contention. That Microsoft isn’t cheap on any of these measures is almost universally agreed.

Yet, Microsoft is the biggest holding in the S&P 500 Value index. It has done really well and has propelled the index past the other two main value gauges by the most ever over six months. The $25 billion iShares S&P 500 Value ETF (ticker IVE) has jumped 12% this year, versus less than 5% for bigger rivals using the Russell 1000 and CRSP value indexes, from FTSE Russell and Chicago’s Center for Research in Security Prices.

“I would question S&P’s or any definition that could ever lead to a company with a double-digit price-to-sales [ratio] entering a value index,” said Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates and an adherent of value investing.

Digging into the reason Microsoft features in S&P’s measure will help investors understand not only the $25 billion IVE, but also the problems with trying to buy other popularinvestment styles such as growth, quality or momentum through index-following funds.

Microsoft isn’t the lone outlier in the index. Amazon and Netflix, not value stocks on any measure, are also in the index’s top 10.

The history behind why this happened shows how Wall Street trips over itself when it tries to organize investments in what seem like neat and tidy categories. They are almost never neat and tidy and often end up with unintended consequences.

The story begins not with the S&P’s value index, but with how the index provider puts stocks into its growth category, often considered the yin to value’s yang. Growth aims to capture growing companies, typically also more expensive on price-to-fundamentals ratios.

S&P noticed back in 2009 that much of the performance of fund managers who focus on growth companies is explained by the price momentum of stocks—the tendency of rising stocks to keep going up, and falling stocks to keep dropping. It rejigged its growth indexes to include momentum, alongside sales growth and a rising price-to-earnings ratio. Reasonable enough, if controversial given that momentum is treated by academics and investors alike as a separate investing style.

Microsoft gets into S&P’s value measure not because it is a value stock, but because its big fall last year meant it didn’t qualify as a growth stock either—and S&P’s approach forces it to allocate all stocks to one or the other. In Microsoft’s case it is split and about half the market value goes in each index, making it the second-biggest growth stock and the biggest value stock. Investors looking for clarity will have to read far into the documents to understand what they’re getting.

Action Line: Should a “value” fund be built with whatever didn’t make it into the growth fund? That’s like staffing the cheer squad with everyone who got cut from the football team. It’s not a good fit. Focus your investments on a portfolio of individual stocks and bonds chosen specifically for you by an advisor with a fiduciary duty to uphold your best interests. When you’re ready to begin, let’s talk.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.