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Last Update: 8:53 AM ET Nov. 28, 2003
ANNANDALE, Va. (CBS.MW) -- If you invest in small-caps or value stocks, your lucky stars should be in
alignment beginning just over a month from now.
the year.
So you need to start now, preparing your buy list and checking it twice.
known in academic circles. But few investors outside the Ivory Tower are
large-cap and growth stocks is almost entirely a function of January alone.
Chicago finance professor Eugene Fama and Dartmouth finance professor Ken French. I first constructed a
hypothetical portfolio that each year buys the one-third of U.S. stocks with the smallest market-caps and shorts
the third with the largest market-caps.
Note carefully that this market-neutral portfolio makes money only when small-caps are outperforming the large
caps.
During the 77 Januarys between June 30, 1926, and this past August 31, this portfolio rose at an annualized rate
of 33% (before transaction costs). In contrast, during all other months of the year over this period, the portfolio
barely made any money at all.
Almost the identical picture emerged when I constructed a portfolio that went long in value stocks and shorted
growth stocks. That means that, on balance, value and growth run neck and neck for 11 months of the year, with
value beating growth in just one -- January.
January's advantage was even bigger when I looked at both small-cap and value stocks in tandem. I constructed a
hypothetical portfolio that invested in small-cap value stocks and shorted large-cap growth issues. Over the last
77 Januarys, this portfolio rose at an annualized rate in excess of 80%. On balance during all other months of the
year, this portfolio was more or less flat.
The clear conclusion: On balance it has not paid for investors to bet on small-cap value stocks in any month
besides January.
You don't have to bet on the direction of the overall market during January in order to bet on small cap and/or
value stocks. By shorting the same dollar amount of large-cap growth stocks as the small-cap value stocks you
purchase, you can make money regardless of how the overall market behaves, as long as your small-cap value
stocks go up by more than the large-cap growth stocks, or decline by less.
Furthermore, you can go short large-cap growth stocks without short-selling any security yourself. All you need
do is purchase one of the mutual funds that mimic a short position in the S&P 500, such as Rydex Ursa (RYURX:
news, chart, profile).
To help you start preparing your buy list of small-cap value stocks, I queried the Hulbert Financial Digest
database for stocks whose market caps are less than $1 billion that also are recommended by at least two
newsletters that have beaten the Wilshire 5000 on a risk-adjusted basis over the last ten years.
The table below lists the 19 stocks that the HFD computers spat out. The table also lists their price/book ratios.
Notice that most have very high such ratios, which indicate that most of these issues are growth stocks rather
than value stocks.
That puts a real premium on finding a small-cap stock that is recommended by several top-performing newsletters
and which also has a low price/book ratio. While rare, these stocks are precisely the ones that, come January,
will have 77 years of history on their side.
Ticker
Stock
Price/Book Ratio
(PMTI: news, chart, profile)
PALOMAR MED TECHNOLOGIES
13.8
(SIGM: news, chart, profile)
SIGMA DESIGNS INC
17.7
(MED: news, chart, profile)
MEDIFAST INC
23.8
(PETS: news, chart, profile)
PETMED EXPRESS INC
15.3
(STCR: news, chart, profile)
STARCRAFT CORP IND
18.8
(ULBI: news, chart, profile)
ULTRALIFE BATTERIES INC
6.6
(EVOL: news, chart, profile)
EVOLVING SYSTEMS INC
17.6
(SFCC: news, chart, profile)
SFBC INTL INC
2.3
(FARO: news, chart, profile)
FARO TECHNOLOGIES INC
7.5
(ABRX: news, chart, profile)
ABLE LABORATORIES INC
6.9
(NENG: news, chart, profile)
NETWORK ENGINES INC
4.9
(CELL: news, chart, profile)
BRIGHTPOINT INC
3.7
(OMM: news, chart, profile)
OMI CORP
1.1
(AQNT: news, chart, profile)
AQUANTIVE INC
4.6
(JCOM: news, chart, profile)
J2 GBL COMMUNICATIONS INC
7.9
(USNA: news, chart, profile)
USANA HEALTH SCIENCES INC
21.2
(ASKJ: news, chart, profile)
ASK JEEVES INC
16.9
(SCSS: news, chart, profile)
SELECT COMFORT
12.3
(ERES: news, chart, profile)
ERESEARCHTECHNOLOGY INC
18.0
Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial
newsletters since 1980.
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