Large Cap Value Stocks

Large cap value stocks are often well established companies that may be temporarily undervalued. This can happen due to a business specific reason or due to cyclical nature of the industry. If you want security of extensive coverage, possible dividend, sufficient liquidity and the opportunity to invest for capital appreciation, you should consider large capitalization companies that may be undervalued. Our large cap stocks have market caps above $13 billion

Undervalued Opportunities are Scarce among Large Cap Stocks

This is an unfortunate consequence of being widely followed by Wall Street analysts. Since there are so many eyes on these stocks, and since these stocks are heavily invested in by indexes and funds following these indexes, the likelihood of finding stocks that are inefficiently prices is very low. As a result, many of the classic value investing principles come up short for large cap stocks, and the value investor has to dig deep to find investment ideas.

When the Tide Goes Out ...

You are better off looking for entire sectors that may be undervalued or temporarily distressed (see: distressed investing), and then considering buying some selected names from these sectors. The easiest way to do this is to look for cyclical stocks that may for one reason or other may be in the middle of a down cycle. This calls for taking a contrarian investing position to the rest of the market. While this sounds simple enough, the skill lies in picking the best of the bunch of stocks scrapping the bottom. The key criteria here is no longer profitability and growth (there may be some of this, but most likely not much). The key criteria becomes market economics and market position, which is a different ball game that most investors are not equipped to analyze well.

The So Called Warren Buffett School of Value Investing

You may have heard this repeated often in the media:
"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. "
The quote is attributed to Warren Buffett.

Classic value investing looks for wonderful prices first. Quality of the company is a secondary consideration. However, once you are limited to investing in large cap companies, as Warren Buffett is, finding ANY company at wonderful prices becomes very difficult. The large cap market is very efficient.

As a result, Buffett had to embrace paying up for some investments and then find ways to improve his odds because the margin of safety in the investment no longer existed. This is where the idea of a sustainable competitive advantage, or a moat, came into being. The calculation is that even if I am paying more now, the investment is very likely to pay off as the sustainable competitive advantage, if maintained, gives the business a long runway to grow its earnings over time without much of competitive threat.

This is another way to value invest in large cap stocks. If you choose to do this, be prepared for long holding periods and strong correlation to the larger economy (as large caps tend to set the economic trends)

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