Earnings Growth and Inflation in Value Investing, as per The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Описание: The Earnings Growth criteria in the Value Investing framework of Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor, require adjustment for Inflation. The link includes more information, and an Inflation/Growth to Filter calculator - https://www.grahamvalue.com/blog/grah...

#theintelligentinvestor #earningsgrowth #inflation

Transcript:

Benjamin Graham was a professor and financial analyst who mentored famous Value Investors such as Warren Buffett.

Graham's Value Investing framework states that a stock for Defensive investment should have a minimum increase of at least one-third in per-share earnings in the past ten years, using three-year averages.

For the sake of uniformity, the Earnings Growth rating on GrahamValue is expressed as a percentage of Graham's requirement; rather than the actual percentage of growth.

A stock is graded Defensive on GrahamValue when all its Graham Ratings exceed 100%.

Thus, an Earnings Growth rating of 100% on GrahamValue indicates an averaged Earnings 1.33 times that of the average from 10 years ago; 200% indicates 1.66 times and so on.

The Inflation rate in the U.S. for the 10-year period that Graham wrote the above rule for was 33%. For the decade 2012-2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics yields a rate close to 25%.

An Earnings increase of 1.25 times, or an Earnings Growth rating of 75%, may therefore be sufficient for a stock to qualify as Defensive today.

At the 2000 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting, Warren Buffett explained how the distinction between Growth and Value stocks is superfluous; and how growth is always part of the equation in valuation.

Graham's complete framework consists of three categories of stocks — Defensive, Enterprising and Net-Net — and seventeen rules for identifying them.

The statistical work of finding such stocks is easily automated using modern data-mining software.