Untuk yang suka baca2 seperti bro @axlarry atau pak @aliantochan, ini ada bacaan lumayan buat akhir pekan tentang strategi investasi: Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk (PDF ref: http://bit.ly/22qaVG1 ).

Beberapa kutipan langsung:

“While there is some agreement that value strategies have produced superior returns, the interpretation of why they have done so is more controversial. Value strategies might produce higher returns because they are contrarian to “naive” strategies followed by other investors. These naive strategies might range from extrapolating past earnings growth too far into the future, to assuming a trend in stock prices, to overreacting to good or bad news, or to simply equating a good investment with a well-run company irrespective of price."

"Regardless of the reason, some investors tend to get overly excited about stocks that have done very well in the past and buy them up, so that these “glamour” stocks become overpriced. Similarly, they overreact to stocks that have done very badly, oversell them, and these out-of-favor “value” stocks become underpriced. Contrarian investors bet against such naive investors."

“Because contrarian strategies invest disproportionately in stocks that are underpriced and underinvest in stocks that are overpriced, they outperform the market."

"Individual investors might focus on glamour strategies for a variety of reasons. First, they may make judgment errors and extrapolate past growth rates of glamour stocks, such as Walmart or Microsoft, even when such growth rates are highly unlikely to persist in the future. Putting excessive weight on recent past history, as opposed to a rational prior, is a common judgment error in psychological experiments and not just in the stock market. Alternatively, individuals might just equate well-run firms with good investments, regardless of price. After all, how can you lose money on Microsoft or Walmart? Indeed, brokers typically recommend “good” companies with “steady” earnings and dividend growth."

"Another important factor is that most investors have shorter time horizons than are required for value strategies to consistently pay off. Many individuals look for stocks that will earn them high abnormal returns within a few months, rather than 4 percent per year over the next 5 years."

"A value strategy that takes 3 to 5 years to pay off but may underperform the market in the meantime (i.e., have a large tracking error) might simply be too risky for money managers from the viewpoint of career concerns, especially if the strategy itself is more difficult to justify to sponsors. If a money manager fears getting fired before a value strategy pays off, he will avoid using such a strategy."

Key takeaway: untuk jangka waktu yang panjang (3 s.d. 5 tahun), saham2 yang kurang disukai pasar seringkali memberikan return lebih baik daripada saham2 populer.

edited: PDF link