Growth Stocks May be Outperforming, But Value Will Come Back

Since the financial crisis, growth stocks have beaten value but, over the long-term, value will have its day in the sun. This according to a recent article in the Financial Post.

“Over the long term, buying value and ignoring the shiny, well-liked stocks has paid off,” the article says, but the reversal in performance over the last decade has seen return-hungry investors gravitating toward dividend-payers and tech stocks and the “cheaper” parts of the market have languished. “Only once has the valuation and performance lag between value and growth been wider,” it asserts (during the 1990s tech boom), after which value “smoked” growth for the next seven years.

The article discusses the prospects of value investing in the context of why it has worked in the past.  “At the core of all value managers’ philosophy is the concept of reversion to the mean. The rocket ships will eventually come back to Earth and the laggards will improve, or at least get less bad,” the article argues. With their depressed prices, it says, comes lower expectations—so there doesn’t take much to generate a pleasant surprise.

According to FT, buying value stocks offers the added benefit of potentially lower trading costs because the “urgency is on the sell side. Investors aren’t lining up to buy value stocks.” While it may take a while, the article concludes that value investing could see a comeback.