preliminaries
In the US, people invest for two main reasons: to send their children to college, and to fund their retirements. In my view, it’s also usually interesting and fun.
People choose both liquid (i.e., cash, bonds, stock) investments and illiquid (limited partnerships, private placements, real estate…).
Of liquid investments, cash is typically regarded as both the lowest potential return and the safest asset, with stocks being the potentially highest return but the riskiest, and bonds somewhere in the middle on both metrics. Under normal circumstances, cash is the simplest to understand, bonds are somewhat more complex–with junk bonds requiring the most study–and stocks the most. The US bond market, though, has recently exited from an extraordinary, three-decade-plus period of declining interest rates which has fueled a secular uptrend in bond prices. So there’s a whole generation of bond portfolio managers who have never really experienced a market where the chances of rising rates are at least as high as having them go lower. This has two implications, I think: bonds are no longer as attractive today as they have been in many peoples’ lifetimes; and it’s hard to predict how thirty years of conditioning still influences today’s behavior of bond professionals or the attractiveness of this asset class.
As far as stocks go, there are two main approaches that investors take toward active stock selection: value and growth.
value investing
This breaks out into several styles:
following business cycles
I regard this as a form of value although many value investors may not.
The general idea is that central governments project a desirable path for national economic growth. Let’s say: +1% real growth+2% inflation=3% nominal, with allowable variation of +/-1%. When the economy threatens to break out of the upper end of this band, the government moves to slow the economy down by raising interest rates. Conversely, if the economy begins to break below the lower end, the government lowers rates.
Every stock market sector is affected by this movement, but the most interest rate sensitive ones tend to be housing, capital equipment, real estate and autos. Therefore, one reasonable strategy is to buy companies in these sectors during recessions, when earnings are at their lows (interest rates at their cyclical highs) and sell them when their earnings are their strongest (rates at cyclical lows).
I tend to use the business cycle when dealing with retail, following the movement of consumers as they trade down and up along the spectrum of dollar stores to luxury as the economy ebbs and flows.
As I see them, the other flavors of value are all asset-based and differ from one another mainly in when to buy rather than what.
what follows is from a post of mine from 2011, with minor changes I made today.
how value investors operate
Value investors like to invest in companies whose stocks are trading at very low ratios of price to book value (shareholders’ equity), price to cash flow, price to earnings and/or price to assets. Many times such companies have gotten to low valuations because their managements have made strategic missteps. Sometimes, though, as I’ve outlined above, the environment in which they work is highly cyclical and the cycle has turned against them. Or it may just be that the industry in which the company operates is boring and seldom catches investors’ eyes.
what (I think) they think
In their pursuit of very cheap companies, value investors hold to two ground-level beliefs, namely:
–you can’t fall off the floor, and
–everything reverts to the mean, sooner or later (but mostly sooner).
The first dictum suggests that if a company’s stock is already all beaten up, at some point it just won’t go any lower. So if buyers can locate companies and buy in at around this level, they have limited downside risk.
The second idea is that the company will eventually overcome the mistakes it has made–either with present management, new leadership, a merger (voluntary or not) with a competitor. In any of these events, the stock will go up …or the business cycle will turn in the company’s favor …or investors may just spontaneously wake up one morning and find the company’s industry much more fascinating (maybe as the first participant in this market is taken over).
In any of these cases, the severe negative market emotion that has driven the stock to extremely low levels will dissipate and the stock will return to a more normal valuation–that is, one more in line with its past trading and with what companies with similar financial characteristics in other industries sell at.
All value investors believe this.
What sets them apart from one another?
For one thing, different investors may use somewhat different metrics. One may be deeply convinced to only pay attention to price/book. Another may be equally committed to price/cash flow. A third may want to have another company in the same industry that’s very well run, whose (higher) margins may give a strong clue as to how good things might one day get.
In the final analysis, however, I don’t think these differences mean all that much. Where I see the big divide for value practitioners is between those who want to see some catalyst that will encourage/force favorable change in the firm being analyzed before they’ll buy it, and those who don’t.
no catalyst
I understand the argument that the “no catalyst needed” camp makes. They say that when things start to go bad for a company, investors can (and usually do) have a violent negative reaction that far exceeds anything that the (deteriorating) fundamentals justify. The stock gets battered in a way it never will again, once the sellers are able regain a bit of their self-control. Therefore, by buying when the blood is flowing the thickest in the streets, you get by far the best prices. You’re more than compensated for the risk early buying entails.
I understand the argument, but temperamentally I could never just look at the price/book (or whatever other metric) screens and jump in. What if the stock turned out to be GM, or Enron, or Global Crossing? As a result, I’ve never tried to investigate whether the approach works. Unfortunately, I have seen it fail, though.
catalyst required, please
The second camp of value investors are those who insist on being able to see some sign, or catalyst, that convinces them that change for the better is under way. It may not have to be much. The retirement of a CEO and the appointment of a more capable successor might be enough …or an activist investor approaching another laggard in the same industry …or indications that the business cycle is changing in the company’s favor. Although I’m not that interested in a regular diet of value names, I’m much more comfortable with this second approach. But that’s just me.
where does GARP stand?
There is a third style that stands on the border between growth and value. It’s called Growth at a Reasonable Price, or GARP. I’ve often had colleagues describe me as a GARP investor, mostly, I think, because I don’t see a compelling reason to live exclusively on the bleeding edge of growth (with emphasis on bleeding). But I’m not a GARP investor in the way value players would understand it.
As growth, GARP means wanting to own stocks whose forward PE is equal to or lower than the forward growth rate. As value, in contrast, being a GARP investor means that you determine a forward PE level, say, 15x, above which you refuse to make a purchase, no matter what you think the forward growth rate will likely be.
For example, I have no problem paying 22x this year’s earnings for a company that I believe will grow earnings at a 28% annual rate for at least the next few years. All the better, if the consensus doesn’t understand it yet. In fact, I’d probably consider myself lucky to have discovered the stock before the PE rose further. I’d also be happy-ish to pay 40x for a company that could grow at a 50% rate.
A value-oriented GARP investor, in contrast, would draw a line in the sand, probably between 15x-20x–certainly no higher, and 20x would be nose-bleed level–and would refuse to buy either stock in the prior paragraph.