Emerging Markets Value

Quiz!

Which of the following are good ways to judge the future of portfolios of value stocks?

1. Look at their 1 year performance. Strong performance is good news.
2. Look at their 1 year performance. Strong performance is bad news.
3. Look at their 10 year performance from all historic cases with valuations similar to today. Strong performance is good news.
4. Look at their 10 year performance from all historic cases with valuations similar to today. Strong performance is bad news.
5. Look at their 10 year performance. Strong performance is good news.
6. Look at their 10 year performance. Strong performance is bad news.

Testing Emerging Markets Value Investments in a Simple Graph

Value stocks are priced low relative to their intrinsic value (low Price/Book, or P/B). Value investing makes logical sense: when buying cheap stocks, you can expect to enjoy higher returns. It is not only logical, but also supported by nearly 100 years of evidence. This is all nice, until you look at the past 10 years and see that value underperformed growth (high Price/Book) for the whole period. This raises the suspicion of a new normal. Maybe the entire group of companies with low prices has something wrong with them, and their value will go down over time, to justify the low price?

There is an easy test to differentiate between bad companies and cheap investments:

1. Bad companies: The underperformance is explained by underperformance of their book values relative to the rest of the market. This is why Warren Buffett tracks the book values of his companies more than prices.
2. Cheap investment: A lot of the underperformance of value stocks is explained by a change in their valuations (P/B) relative to the rest of the market.

As an example, here is a comparison of DFA funds, one representing overall Emerging Markets (EM), and the other representing EM Value. The graph divides the valuations (P/B) of EM by EM Value. A high value represents an increase in the price paid for all of EM relative to the price paid for EM Value stocks.

For the year (2020), EM Value underperformed EM by about 11%, while the valuations difference increased by 15%. This means that the value companies, as measured by their book value, did 4% better than the overall market. This supports the thesis that these investments are simply cheaper, and you may reap the benefit as the valuations continue their cycle.

Quiz Answer:

Which of the following are good ways to judge the future of portfolios of value stocks?

1. Look at their 1 year performance. Strong performance is good news.
2. Look at their 1 year performance. Strong performance is bad news.
3. Look at their 10 year performance from all historic cases with valuations similar to today. Strong performance is good news. [Correct Answer]
4. Look at their 10 year performance from all historic cases with valuations similar to today. Strong performance is bad news.
5. Look at their 10 year performance. Strong performance is good news.
6. Look at their 10 year performance. Strong performance is bad news.

Explanations:

1. You cannot conclude anything positive or negative from a 1 year period.
2. See #1 above.
3. The combination of averaging many 10-year stretches with a focus on pricing (valuations) similar to today, gives useful information.
4. See #3 above.
5. After a decade of unusually good returns, the risk of a weaker decade goes up, so it is not necessarily a good sign.
6. After a decade of unusually good returns, the risk of a weaker decade goes up, but it is also not a guarantee for a bad next decade.