The value premium within and across GICS industry sectors in a pre-financial collapse sample

A portfolio manager employing a top-down/bottom-up method who seeks to capture the value premium long promised in academic literature would want to first determine whether the premium exists across industries and not just observed in firm-specific book-to-market (BE/ME) relationships. Next, the investor would want to know if BE/ME characteristics are stable across these defined homogeneous groups or whether there is considerable variation. Results show that certain industries appear to have a natural or structural tendency to reflect either a high or low BE/ME characteristic. Results also shows that growth-oriented industry BE/ME characteristics appear to be more stable than value-oriented industries over time. Moreover, stocks from growth-oriented industries tend to cluster at high rates in the lowest BE/ME quintile, while stocks from value-oriented industries appear more evenly distributed across middle BE/ME quintiles over time. Value stocks found in growth sectors outperform value stocks in value sectors, contrary to prior published results. The January premium exists both within and across Global Industry Classification Standard industry sectors, but the value premium is not subsumed by the January effect in either analysis.