Piotroski (2000) suggests that his composite score is appropriate for high BM firms
while Mohanram (2005) argues that his composite score is appropriate for low BM firms.
This paper then also examines whether VSCORE and GSCORE are associated with future
stock returns for subsamples of high and low BM firms. We classify low BM stocks as firms
with BM ratio below 30th percentile while firms with BM ratio above 70th percentile are
classified as high BM stocks. Consistent with results for our full sample, our empirical
results for both subsamples of high and low BM firms, show that portfolios of stocks with
higher VSCORE and GSCORE earn higher one-year and two-year market-adjusted buy-andhold
returns than do those with lower VSCORE and GSCORE without additional risk and
zero-investment portfolios of longing high score stocks and shorting low score stocks earn
significant positive market-adjusted returns. Specifically, a zero-investment portfolio based
on VSCORE (GSCORE) earns one-year and two-year ahead market-adjusted returns of
18.70% (16.81%) and 31.56% (16.72%), respectively, for a subsample of high BM firms and
of 11.44% (23.92%) and 16.57% (8.01%), respectively, for a subsample of low BM firms