Greenbackd

Price-to-book value is demonstrably useful as a predictor of future investment returns. As we discussed yesterday in Testing the performance of price-to-book value, various studies, including Roger Ibbotson’s Decile Portfolios of the New York Stock Exchange, 1967 – 1984 (1986), Werner F.M. DeBondt and Richard H. Thaler’s Further Evidence on Investor Overreaction and Stock Market Seasonality (1987), Josef Lakonishok, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation and Risk (1994) and The Brandes Institute’s Value vs Glamour: A Global Phenomenon (2008) all conclude that lower price-to-book value stocks tend to outperform higher price-to-book value stocks, and at lower risk. Understanding this to be the case, the obvious question for me becomes, “Within the low price-to-book value universe, is there any way of further distinguishing likely stars from likely laggards and thereby further increasing returns?” The answer can be found in two studies: Joseph D. Piotroski’s seminal paper Value Investing: The Use of Historical Financial Statement Information to Separate Winners from Losers (.pdf) and Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny’s original Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation and Risk (1994).

I’ll be discussing both of these studies in some detail over the next two days, starting with LSV’s Two-Dimensional Classifications tomorrow.