2017 was an unusually good year for our monthly screens for Undervalued and Overvalued stocks. Our Undervalued Screens outperformed the S&P 500 by 13.6% while the Overvalued underperformed by 17.6% relative*.
The resulting spread of 31.1% between the two Screens compares to a spread of +7.9% per annum since inception in 2004. Putting in another way, 2017 was 4 times better than normal.
An analysis of the Sector drivers for the performance of Undervalued and Overvalued is summarized in the following tables which show the sum of the Sectors’s equities’ Relative Strength throughout the year:
The sum of Relative Strength by Sector indicates which Sectors contributed most to the performance. In both screens one Sector accounted for the majority of the net performance.
In the Undervalued Screens, it was Technology which contributed 61% of the net performance, followed by Industrial (25%), Consumer Cyclical (12%) and Basic Material (7%).
Accounting for the Overvalued’s underperformance, Energy was the major contributor (62%) followed by Telecommunications (11%), Financial (10%) and Consumer Cyclical (9%).
2018
Looking ahead, the following are summaries of our current screens by Sector. VR is the average Valuation Return or Risk, and E/M is the Estimate divided by the normalized earnings (MPEPS).
Undervalued
Overvalued
For the individual company screens please contact robertlcolby@gmail.com
© 2018 Robert L. Colby
* The Screened companies are from our universe of over 400 equities. They are selected on the basis being in two of the best, and worst, quartiles including Valuation Return/Risk (VR). The Undervalued had an average of 22 equities while the Overvalued averaged 28.