Growth versus value stocks
Source: HT Mint
by Manas Chakravarty and Mobis Philipose
Periods of market turbulence lead to a flight to quality, or a flight to value.
When the markets are making new highs every day, solid large-cap value stocks are nobody’s favourite, as everybody is busy chasing growth stocks. It’s only when investors start having doubts about growth that attention shifts back to value investing.
Investors have for long been divided into two camps—those who believe in growth stocks, in the belief that their superior earnings growth justifies the price, and those who believe in hunting for under-priced stocks that offer value.
Growth investors believe in buying stocks with above-average earnings growth, no matter what the price. Value investors look exclusively for “bargains”, or stocks that are trading at a discount to their usual valuation.
Of course, the growth versus value debate is also a caricature—most investors opt for a mix of growth and value stocks. But many funds have sprung up to take advantage of the distinction between these two investing styles.
Which of them have done better during the recent sell-off?
MSCI Barra has a set of indices that distinguish between growth and value stocks and they show that while the world growth index has fallen 1.09% in August (till the 24th), the index of world value stocks is down 0.59%. That’s exactly as expected, since investors flock to value stocks during sell-offs. The MSCI US value index is up 2.33% this month, while the growth index is up 0.89%.
Emerging markets, however, are a sub-set of the growth stock universe, which is why both the emerging market growth stocks as well as the value stocks have been hammered. The EM growth stocks in the MSCI Barra universe are down 6.59% this month, while EM value stocks are down 6.53%. So the sell-off hasn’t spared EM value stocks. Year to date, emerging market value stocks are up 14.9%, compared with EM growth stocks being up 13%. The MSCI India value index is down 9.4% this month, while the India growth index is lower by 10.02%—only a marginal difference.
Proponents of value investing claim that value stocks do better over the longer term. That appears to be true for the US, where the MSCI Value index has given annualized returns of 4.82% over the last ten years, while the growth index has grown 4.10%.
But in India, value stocks have scored over growth stocks this year, over a one-year period, over the last two years and over the last five years. That’s surprising, because India is supposed to be a growth story. It’s only over a 10-year period that the MSCI India growth index has delivered higher annualized returns than the value index.
