Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Use the 10-Year CAPE for Long-Term Outsized Returns

Mebane Faber has a fascinating investment paper called Global Value: Building Trading Models with the 10 Year CAPE in which he discusses a strategy that invests equally-weighted in the most undervalued x% of country equities, rebalanced yearly, as measured by their 10-year CAPE (cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio), and only when this measurement is below 15 (otherwise in cash).  It looks like investing in the top 10% of undervalued companies will give you an annual return of nearly 19%!  I sorted the study's 32 countries by 10-year CAPE, and this is what I got:


So according to the study, for outsized returns the top 10% of undervalued (and currently extremely distressed) countries to invest in are Greece, Ireland, Italy, and maybe Russia!!!  The top 25% would include the PIIGS.  With today's financial headlines all about the European sovereign debt crisis, that would take some serious conviction and courage for any investor.

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