“After 5 years of a bull market, the only place left to invest is in value names”
“The best protection in this volatile market are value stocks”

How reliable are these sorts of claims?  Those promoting the approach offer lists of stocks that are considered undervalued typically when they meet such financial criteria as low price/sales, low price/book value, or high, stable and growing dividends. However, they rarely attach timeframes or price targets.

So I decided to do some “back testing”.  By searching the term “value stock lists”, I gathered a small random sample of such lists published in 2012-13; stocks in these lists met one or more of criteria that qualifies them as “value stocks” at the time.  I then compared their stock price on the publication date with that of twelve months later; as a benchmark, those changes were compared with against the S&P 500 change over the same period.  These were selected at random and space limitations prevented including more, I suspect others wou

David Einhorn’s Comments at the Greenlight Re (GLRE) Investor Day on May 20th 2014

• Bernanke was predictable, but the new chairwoman is less predictable.
• It has been 5 yrs into the recovery. Corporate profits have increased a lot and continue to grow. Current earnings expectations are high at a double-digit growth rate. Q1 numbers are showing the economy growing at  ~1%.
• The fund is fully invested at 114% long and 66% short. It has increased its net long book from 35 to 50%.
• Largest longs are Alpha Bank, Apple, gold, Marvel, Micron, and Oil States International.
• Longs are cash-rich tech companies and businesses benefiting from structural changes. Shorts include secular decliners, momentum stocks, and iron ore related companies. Macro overlay due to monetary policy and unresolved imbalances.
• Divergence between stock and bond markets?  Bond market is saying that economy is slowing down and yields have come down. Yields are not down because of deflation – we are not in deflation as commo