Research shows that value stocks can generate an excess return because the market tends to overestimate their problems, and value investors benefit when it realizes that. But despite that being true on average, many value stocks actually have even bigger problems than the market has priced in. This week, we look at one of the quantitative strategies we follow that attempts to separate the winners from the losers within the value investing space.
We discuss Joseph Piotroski’s paper “Value Investing: The Use of Historical Financial Statement Information to Separate Winners from Losers”. In the paper, Piotroski developed a series of nine fundamental tests (which he called the F Score) to identify value stocks that are more likely to generate an excess return going forward. He found that stocks with high F Scores showed significant improvements in performance relative to stocks with low F Scores. We examine the nine criteria used in this strategy in detail and talk about how it can be implemented in an investment strategy.
