Piotroski (2000) applies fundamental analysis
to develop investment strategy for high book-tomarket
(BM) firms in U.S. markets. He observes
that although high BM firms earn high future stock
returns, these high stock returns only come from
a few firms suggesting that BM ratio alone might
sometimes not be adequate to identify good
quality stocks in which investors should invest.
Hence, a binary score of financial ratios is given
to each firm, with 1 indicating that firms possess
strong financial status in each of these 4 aspects:
profitability, operating efficiency, liquidity, and
leverage, and with 0 otherwise. Firms are then
ranked by total binary scores. He indicates that a
simple strategy of separating winners from losers
by using basic financial ratios has the ability to
earn large future excess returns. Further, since
weak fundamental firms, on average, generate
negative excess returns, an investment strategy
that buys strong fundamental firms and shorts
weak fundamental firms can earn a large magnitude
of positive returns.
In contrast, Mohanram (2005) documents
that one can also apply a fundamentals driven
strategy, appropriately modified by other measures
specifically for growth firms such as the stability
of earnings, sales growth, intensity of R&D, capital
expenditures, and advertising, on a sample of low
BM stocks in U.S. markets to separate winners
from losers, though a large portion of returns is
conditioned by the investor’s ability to short sell
stocks.
In Japan, Nguyen (2003) constructs a simple
financial score for each sample firm and finds that