Volume 12, No. 4, Fourth Quarter 2014

Free Cash Flows, Valuation and Growth Opportunities Bias

by: Hersh Shefrin

Analysts who base valuations on expected free cash flows are vulnerable to making biased assessments of terminal value because they fail to take into account the implications of disappearing growth opportunities during the terminal period. This leaves their valuations subject to “growth opportunities bias” (GOB). There are two sets of issues addressed in this paper, one narrow and the other broad. The narrow issues pertain to the basis for GOB, a technique for addressing it, and examples to illustrate the debiasing technique. The broader issues pertain to group psychology in respect to the manifestation of GOB in the analyst community, including the CFA Institute which certifies analysts.

For Better Performance: Constrain Portfolio Weights Differentially and Globally

by: Haim Levy and Moshe Levy

Even after more than six decades since the publication of the breakthrough article by Markowitz, the Mean–Variance framework is still the most commonly employed portfolio management tool. Yet, as portfolio managers know all too well, the optimal diversification and the induced performance are very sensitive to potential parameter estimation errors. This paper suggests two new and related portfolio optimization methods to deal with this problem: the Variance-Based Constraints (VBC), and the Global Variance-Based Constraints (GVBC) methods. By the VBC method the constraint imposed on the weight of a given stock is inversely proportional to its standard deviation: the higher a stock’s sample standard deviation, the higher the potential estimation error of its parameters, and therefore the tighter the constraint imposed on its weight. GVBC employs a similar idea, but instead of imposing a sharp boundary constraint on each stock, a quadratic “cost” is assigned to deviations from the naive 1/N weight, and a single global constraint is imposed on the total cost of all deviations. We find that these two new methods outperform existing methods. These results are obtained for two different data sets, and are also robust to the number of assets under consideration and to the number of return observations.

A Simple Diversified Portfolio Strategy

by: Bernd Hanke and Garrett Quigley

We present a simple portfolio construction approach which is a blend of market weights and equal stock and sector weights. Our approach results in a highly diversified portfolio both on a stock level and on a sector level and generates higher portfolio returns at slightly lower risk than a market weighted index. We demonstrate that the higher returns of our diversified portfolio originate both from mitigating the link with market weights and from its higher return benefit due to diversification which we are able to capture because we rebalance our portfolio on a regular basis. Our diversified portfolio is highly implementable and has very high investment capacity.

Separating Winners From Losers Among Value and Growth Stocks in Different US Exchanges: 1969-2011

by: George Athanassakos

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (a) to determine whether there is value premium in our sample of US stocks for the period May 1, 1969–April 30, 2011; and (b) to examine whether an additional screening to the first step of the value investing process can be employed to separate the outperforming value and growth stocks from the underperforming ones. In this paper, we document the following: We find a consistently strong and pervasive value premium over the sample period. We show that there are distinct differences between US exchanges which means that papers that aggregate all US exchanges under one umbrella may dilute findings and bias conclusions. The stocks of AMEX firms, high business risk firms and firms that report extraordinary items experience worse returns than the rest of the US stocks in our sample. We find that P/E based sortings produce better overall results than sortings based on P/B. We are able to construct a composite score indicator (SCORE), combining various fundamental and market metrics, which enable us not only to separate the winners from the losers among value and growth stocks, but also to predict future returns of value and growth stocks. SCORE portfolios give better results for sortings based on P/E and when we employed a cross-section–time series medians approach. Results remain robust for a time period out of sample, for negative P/E or P/B ratio firms and for the firms that were excluded from SCORE-based performance, namely, AMEX stocks, stocks with high business risk and firms that reported extraordinary items the year before. Finally, we provide evidence that the return of a portfolio strategy that buys (sells) stocks that rank low (high) in the composite score indicator has significant explanatory power in an asset pricing model framework and that such a strategy earns statistically significant positive returns.

The Dependence of Upside Capture Ratios and Downside Capture Ratios on the Length of the Measurement Interval, Beta, and Alpha

by: Robert Ferguson, Danny Meidan and Joel Rentzler

Upside and downside capture ratios are used to assess the quality of investment managers and investment strategies. We propose a simple theoretical model which predicts that the upside capture ratio is an increasing function of the measurement interval length and that the downside capture ratio is a decreasing function of the measurement interval length. The model also predicts that all measurement intervals’ capture ratios depend strongly on betas, not just alphas, and that short measurement intervals’ capture ratios are dominated by betas, hence are unreliable for assessing alphas. Consequently, capture ratios are problematic for assessing managers’ skill.

Performance Evaluation and Attribution of Security Portfolios

by: Bernd R. Fischer and Russ Wermers • reviewed by: Pierre-Emmanuel Marzouk

“Book Reviews” identifies important, and often popular, new books from a wide range of investment topics. Beyond providing a summary and review of the content and style of the books, “Book Reviews” seeks to contribute to a conscious, critical, and informed approach to investment literature.

Global Investing for the Value Trader

by: Jack L. Treynor

“Case Studies” presents a case pertinent to contemporary issues and events in investment management. Insightful and provocative questions are posed at the end of each case to challenge the reader. Each case is an invitation to the critical thinking and pragmatic problem solving that are so fundamental to the practice of investment management.

Practitioner’s Digest • Vol. 12, No. 4

The “Practitioners Digest” emphasizes the practical significance of manuscripts featured in the “Insights” and “Articles” sections of the journal. Readers who are interested in extracting the practical value of an article, or who are simply looking for a summary, may look to this section.

Practitioner’s Digest • Vol. 12, No. 4

The “Practitioners Digest” emphasizes the practical significance of manuscripts featured in the “Insights” and “Articles” sections of the journal. Readers who are interested in extracting the practical value of an article, or who are simply looking for a summary, may look to this section.