Facts About Formulaic Value Investing

The term ‘value investing' is increasingly being adopted by quantitative investment strategies that use ratios of common fundamental metrics (e.g., book value, earnings) to market price. A hallmark of such strategies is that they do not involve a comprehensive effort to determine the intrinsic value of the underlying securities. We document two facts about such strategies. First, there is little compelling evidence that such strategies deliver superior investment performance for U.S. equities. Second, instead of identifying undervalued securities, these strategies systematically identify firms with temporarily inflated accounting numbers. We argue that these strategies should not be confused with value strategies that employ a comprehensive approach to determine the intrinsic value of the underlying securities