Value Your Wealth – Part Four: Mutual Fund & ETF Analysis

Parts One through Three of the series are linked below.

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: Quantifying the Value Proposition

Part Three: Sector Analysis

In Part One, the introduction to our Value Your Wealth series, we documented how recent returns for investors focused on growth companies have defied the history books and dwarfed returns of investors focused on value stocks. In particular: “There have only been eight ten-year periods over the last 90 years (total of 90 ten-year periods) when value stocks underperformed growth stocks. Two of these occurred during the Great Depression and one spanned the 1990s leading into the Tech bust of 2001. The other five are recent, representing the years 2014 through 2018.”

In this, the fourth part of the Value Your Wealth series, we focus on growth and value mutual funds and ETFs. Our purpose is to help determine which professional value and growth fund managers are staying true to their stated objectives.

Fund Analysis

A large part of most investor’s investment process starts with the determination of an investment objective. From this starting point, investors can appropriately determine the asset classes and investment strategies that will help them achieve or even exceed their objectives. 

Once an investor decides upon an objective, strategy, and asset class, they must select individual securities or funds. This article focuses singularly on assessing growth and value mutual funds and ETFs. In particular it shows how an investor focused on growth or value can choose funds that are managed properly to meet their goals.

Investors usually key on the following factors when selecting a mutual fund or ETF: 

• Declared fund strategy (Growth or Value in this case)
• Prior period returns
• Fee and expense structure
• Reputation of the fund family and possibly the manager

These four factors provide valuable information but can be misleading.

For instance, prior returns provide a nice scorecard for the past but can be deceptive. As an example, if we are currently scanning for value funds based on performance, the highest ranking funds will more than likely be those that have leaned most aggressively toward growth stocks. While these funds may seem better, what we believe is more important the fund managers adherence to their objectives.  Given we are looking forward and believe value will outperform growth, we want fund managers that we can trust will stick with value stocks.

It is also important not to shun funds with the highest expenses and/or gravitate towards those with the lowest. We must be willing to pay up, if necessary, to achieve our objectives. For instance, if a fund offers more exposure to value stocks than other comparable value funds, it may be worth the higher fee for said exposure. Conversely, there are many examples where one can gain more exposure to their preferred strategy with cheaper funds. 

Most investors check the fund strategy, but they fail to determine that a fund is being effectively and cost efficiently managed towards their stated strategy. 

We now compare the largest growth and value mutual funds and ETFs to assess which funds offer the most value, so to speak. 

Mutual Fund/ETF Analysis

In order to limit the population of value and growth mutual funds and ETFs to a manageable number, we limited our search to the largest funds within each strategy that had at least 85% exposure to U.S. based companies. We further restricted the population to those funds with a stated strategy of growth or value per Bloomberg.

In prior articles of this series, we have used Bloomberg growth and value factor scores and our own growth and value composite scores. While we would prefer to use our own computations, the large and diverse holdings of the mutual funds and ETFs make it nearly impossible for this exercise. Accordingly, Bloomberg growth and value factor scores provide us the most accurate description of where the respective funds lie on the growth/value spectrum. It is important to note that Bloomberg assigns every fund both a growth and a value score. We consider both scores and not just the score pertinent to growth or value.

We understand most of our readers do not have access to Bloomberg data. As such, we provide a DIY approach for investors to track growth and value exposure amongst mutual funds and ETFs.

Growth and Value Scores

The scatter plot below shows the 54 funds analyzed. Each dot represents a fund and the intersection of its respective growth (x-axis) and value scores (y-axis). The funds most heavily skewed towards value (high value scores and low growth scores) are in the upper left, while heavily growth oriented funds are in the bottom right (high growth score and low value scores).  Information about the funds used in this report and their scores can be found in the tables below the graph. Certain funds are labeled for further discussion.   

A few takeaways:

• VIVAX (Growth -.60, Value +.37): While this value fund is farthest to the left, there are other funds that offer more value exposure. However, this fund has the lowest growth score among value funds.
• DFLVX (Growth -.43, Value +.68): This value fund offers an interesting trade off to VIVAX sporting a higher value score but a less negative growth score.
• AIVSX (Growth +.10, Value -.05): Despite its classification as a value fund, AIVSX has a slight bias towards growth. Not surprisingly, this fund has recently outperformed other value funds but would likely underperform in the event value takes the lead.
• FDGRX (Growth +.88, Value -.64): This growth fund offers both the highest growth score and lowest value score. For investors looking for an aggressive profile with strong growth exposure and little value exposure, this fund is worth considering.
• VPMCX (Growth -.04, Value +.16): Despite its classification as a growth fund, VPMCX has a slight bias towards value.
• In our opinion, the six funds with growth and value scores near zero (+/-.20) in the red box do not currently have a significant growth or strategy orientation, and as such, they are similar to a broad market index like the S&P 500.

It is important to stress that the data represents a snapshot of the fund portfolios for one day. The portfolio managers are always shifting portfolios toward a value or growth bias based on their market views.

 (CLICK on the tables to enlarge)

Data Courtesy Bloomberg

The data above gives us potential funds to meet our strategic needs. However, we also need to consider fees.  

Fees

The scatter plots below isolate growth and value funds based on their respective growth or value score and fees charged.

We circled three groupings of the growth funds to help point out the interaction of fees and growth scores. The four funds in the blue circle have average or above average fees versus other growth funds yet provide a minimal bias towards growth. The yellow circle represents a sweet spot between low fees and a good exposure to growth stocks. Lastly, the red circle shows funds where  heavy exposure to growth comes with above average fees.

This graph circles three groupings of value funds to help point out the interaction of fees and growth scores. The blue circle contains funds with little to no bias towards value. The yellow circle represents a good mix of value and cheap fees. The red circle, our sweet spot in this graph, shows that heavy exposure to value can be had with fees near the group average.

Alpha and Bad Incentives 

Alpha is a measure that calculates how much a portfolio manager, trader, or strategy over or underperforms an index or benchmark. From a career perspective, alpha is what separates good fund managers from average or bad ones.

We mention alpha as we believe the current prolonged outperformance of growth over value is pushing professional fund managers to stray from their stated objectives. As an example, a value based fund manager can add exposure to growth stocks to help beat the value index he or she is measured against.

Adding growth to a value fund may have proven to be alpha positive in the past, but we must concern ourselves with how well the fund manager is adhering to the fund’s objective Simply put, we are trying to find managers that are staying true to their objectives not those who have benefited from a deviation from stated strategy in the past.

It is important to note that positive alpha can be attained by sticking to the stated objective and finding stocks that outperform the index. This is the type of alpha that we seek.

DIY

As discussed, growth and value factors can change for funds based on the whims of the portfolio manager. Therefore, the data provided in this article will not age well. If you do not have access to Bloomberg to track value and growth scores we offer another approach.

Morningstar provides a blunt but effective style analysis tool.  To access it, go to www.morningstar.com and select your favorite fund. Then click on the tab labeled Portfolio and scroll down to Style Details.

The following screen print shows Morningstar’s style analysis for value fund DFLVX.

The box in the top right separates the fund’s holdings by market capitalization and value growth classifications. We can use this data to come up with our own scores. For instance, 59% (46+13) of DFLVX is biased toward value (red circle) while only 6% (5+1) is in growth companies (blue circle). To further demonstrate how a fund compares to its peers, the Value & Growth Measures table on the bottom left, compares key fundamental statistics. As shown by three of the first four valuation ratios, DFLVX has more value stocks than the average for funds with similar objectives.

Summary

The word “Value” in a fund name does not mean the fund takes on a value bias at all times. As investors, we must not rely on naming conventions. This means investors must do some extra homework and seek the funds that are truly investing in a manner consistent with the funds, and ultimately the investor’s, objective.

As we have mentioned, we are at a point in the economic and market cycles where investors should consider slowly rotating towards value stocks. Not only is the style historically out of favor, many of the names within that style are unjustifiably beaten down and due for mean reversion to more favorable levels. We hope this article provides some guidance to ensure that those who heed our advice are actually adding value exposure and not value in name only.