por admin » Dom Dic 12, 2010 8:54 pm
Three top 2010 sectors to own in 2011
Compra alto y vende mas alto parece una estrategia apropiada solo para los mas valientes, pero comprar las que estan subiendo y dejar que el mercado las suba mas no es tan riesgoso como suena.
Las ganadoras del mercado tienden a repetir - en el corto plazo. Comprar los tres secotres ganadores de mercado Americano en el anio y mantenerlos todo el proximo anio le ha ganado al S&P 500 la mayoria de las veces en las ultimas dos decadas.
Las ganadoras de este anio han sido discretionary, industriales y materiales.
Riding momentum of year’s winners has been profitable strategy
By Jonathan Burton, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — “Buy high, sell higher” seems an appropriate strategy only for the bravest investors, but buying what’s hot and letting these winners ride isn’t as risky as it sounds.
Stock market winners tend to repeat — over the short-term. Buying the top three U.S. market sectors of one year and holding them through the following year has solidly outperformed the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index /quotes/comstock/21z!i1:in\x (SPX 1,240, +7.40, +0.60%) most of the time over the past two decades, with only a bit more volatility, according to Standard & Poor’s Equity Research.
This momentum-driven strategy, akin to the “hot hand” or “follow the leader” theory, currently points to more gains for the market’s three most-popular sectors: consumer discretionary, up 25.1% this year through Dec. 8; industrials, up 20.3%, and materials, with a 13.6% gain. The S&P 500 added 10.1% over the same period. All returns exclude reinvested dividends.
Here’s how you let your winners ride: Buy 2010’s three best S&P 500 sectors before year-end and hold them until the end of 2011. Then sell that group, buy whatever sectors do best next year, and own those winners through 2012. Repeat the process each year.
The strategy has an impressive track record. The three sector winners produced a 10.3% average annualized gain, excluding dividends, from the end of 1990 through Dec. 8, S&P found. That beat a portfolio of the three sector losers, which rose 8.9% annualized over the same period. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was up 8.6%. The sector winners carried slightly more risk, but their extra return compensated for the bumps.
“You’re much better off sticking with the winners than you are with the losers on a one-year basis,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Equity Research. Indeed, “let your winners ride” is the first pointer Stovall outlines in his book, “The Seven Rules of Wall Street.”
Follow the herd
This long-only price momentum strategy isn’t new, but it might make you uncomfortable. Momentum investing flies in the face of the long-term oriented advice that individual investors typically hear.
Conventional advice eviscerates hot-hand investing as little more than gambling and market-timing, and to be sure, momentum strategies can fail miserably. For example, the three best sectors of 1999 tumbled 26.5% in 2000 while the S&P 500 lost 10.1%, according to S&P.
Letting your winners ride also fell short in 2009, when the three 2008 winners gained 11.7% versus 23.5% for the S&P 500, according to S&P. The winning sectors also trailed slightly in 2003 and 2004.
That’s the painful, dark side of momentum investing: Nobody knows when the music will end. So be careful. Letting your winners ride is a short-term play — no more than 12 months — that requires a high level of discipline and progressively higher stop-loss orders to protect your gains.
Yet on a year-by-year basis, the odds favor momentum buyers. The portfolio of the three top S&P 500 sectors has beaten the benchmark 70% of the time over the past two decades, S&P found, versus a 40% success rate for the bottom three.
Advisers also warn against throwing money at what’s hot. But in fact you might not be too late to the party.
“Identifying the leading S&P sectors and expecting the ones that did best over the previous period to continue to outperform has been a profitable strategy,” said Marvin Appel, editor of Systems & Forecasts, an investing newsletter.
Everybody loves a winner
Those years when sector winners stumbled offer clues about when and why momentum investing fails.
Momentum strategies need market sentiment to move in an upward direction for an extended period. At such times, volatility is low and, as another Wall Street maxim teaches, the trend is your friend.