Sunday, May 11, 2014

Rambling Analysis

Have come out of the bedroom for first time post surgery.  Beautiful Spring Mother's Day here in New England.  Thought I would draft a rambling analysis. Not really sure where I am going. But maybe I will say something interesting.

Tobacco Stocks

Obviously a lot of people have strong emotional feelings about tobacco stocks. The companies certainly create a product that kills and is addictive.  There have been a lot of tobacco stocks on the screens of late, and generally, as far as MFI is concerned, they have been a good choice.  Here is a summary from my database:

Stock Count Avg Change
LO 39 30.2%
MO 7 12.4%
RAI 9 25.6%
VGR 12 22.7%
Grand Total 67 26.3%

Most Times On The List

I have had 101 monthly tracking portfolios created. I thought it would be interesting to look at all stocks that have been in the tracking portfolio 30 or more times.  Does a stock do better if it is on the list all the time?  You would not think so.  Let us check it out.

Stock Count Avg Change
USMO 81 12.5%
DLX 69 40.4%
EGY 62 -1.6%
VPHM 58 15.3%
UNTD 54 -2.3%
RTN 53 19.9%
APOL 53 -3.7%
PDLI 52 19.5%
KFY 51 1.3%
PPD 45 14.5%
MSFT 43 15.8%
GME 43 31.8%
UIS 40 1.6%
AGX 40 39.7%
LO 39 30.2%
HLF 39 42.8%
ESI 39 -14.0%
TNAV 38 -4.1%
GNI 38 -15.5%
DELL 38 7.4%
KG 37 -13.7%
HRB 36 28.2%
CHKE 36 -5.6%
USNA 35 26.0%
amed 35 -28.7%
LPS 34 22.0%
FRX 34 7.4%
ELNK 34 1.2%
AFAM 34 -6.9%
MRX 33 24.4%
QCOR 33 101.0%
GTAT 33 32.8%
STRA 32 -6.7%
VCI 31 3.6%
CPLA 31 27.2%
IDCC 31 20.9%
PETS 30 7.5%
CF 30 26.2%

The weighted average is 13.5%.  Every stock I have ever tracked is up on average 9.6%.  So common stocks in total have been better than average.  How about stocks on the list 5 times or less?  Hmm, it is really too long a list to publish.  But stocks on there just once, have gone up by 14.6% on average - stocks on 2 times are up 15.2%.

By Market Cap

I have shown this table several times, but it is such an important table it bears repeating.  Group 1 is essentially $1b and greater in market cap.

Purchase Year Largest Smallest Total
2006 23.6% 7.3% 13.9%
2007 -15.4% -22.9% -20.5%
2008 -2.5% -10.3% -8.2%
2009 32.5% 42.3% 39.3%
2010 16.1% 3.6% 8.0%
2011 -2.0% 0.2% -0.8%
2012 37.2% 19.7% 27.5%
2013 27.3% 11.8% 20.4%
2014 3.2% -0.3% 1.8%
Grand Total 15.2% 5.8% 9.6%

This is stunning.  Just by picking stocks greater than $1 billion in market cap from the 50 over $100m screen, you would have significantly outperformed (the R3K over this stretch is 8.8% per year).




2 comments:

Unknown said...

Going to one of our daughters for Crabs for Mother Day. I like modelo but I am cheap. My keg of keystone light last a long time because my friends won't touch it.

Looking at the table by Market Cap I would have thought the draw down would be a lot greater than your table shows.

Only -15.4% and -2.5%. Can you help me understand why this did so well vs SPY losses of over +45%.

Marsh_Gerda said...

John,

the SPY numbers you are thinking of is a single point in time number, so say from January 1st 2008 to December 31st 2008. My numbers represent 12 portfolios bought monthly and held for a year. So while a monthly tracking portfolio bought in January 2008 likely mirrored the SPY results for 2008, a monthly tracking portfolio bought in December 2008 did very very well. My number is the blend of all 2008 portfolios.