Stockholm School of Economics
Master Thesis in Finance
9
market-to-book ratios, as well as a fundamental valuation using the Greenwald valuation model, shows that while using fundamental analysis within this framework, one could achieve 1.1% higher annual returns between 1985-1998 and 13.2% higher annual returns between 1998-2007 than the returns that one could achieve while merely buying stocks with low price-to-earnings and market-to-book ratios (Athanassakos [2009]). The success of applying the valuation model could be due both to the power of applying fundamental analysis when valuing a company as well as to some built-in mechanical strategy that comes into play when applying Greenwald’s model. To the extent that the latter is true you cannot really give credit to the fundamental analysis of the investor for those parts of the returns that are attributed to market anomalies that could be exploited in a screening process mechanically, i.e. applying the valuation model empirically rather than fundamentally.