*I spent a few hours researching, calculating and tabulating results for this post.
“Buy when there is blood in the street.”
I read this book Global Value by Meb Faber in 2018. This book is about “How to Spot Bubbles, Avoid Market Crashes, and Earn Big Returns in the Stock Market”.
It has this interesting idea which is not to only invest in your local stock market or just the S&P 500 index fund. There may be insufficient diversification. And people who just keep buying the S&P 500 index fund are constantly buying into an overvalued market.
THE SIMPLE IDEA
- Buy Country ETFs with low valuation ratio
- Buy a few (5 to 10) of the ETFs
- Rebalance annually
According to the author, this idea should outperform the S&P 500 index over the long term. However, I have no way and no idea to test it out. In fact, I choose 5 ETFs to test it out in 2019. This idea didn’t outperform the S&P 500. Of course it is only 1 year of testing and it is unable to provide any concrete proof.
To further ensure that the ETF is “undervalued”, I added another criteria to filter the “cheapest” ETF. And that is using Benjamin Graham’s Graham Number – the PE x PB ratio must be lower than 22.5. Hence, I am actually choosing 10 ETFs with the Lowest PE x PB ratio, out of the 49 country ETFs that I can find.
49 Country ETFs
THE “CHEAPEST” ETFS
These are the chosen 10 Country ETFs. I think the table is very simple to understand. The PE x PB ratio is between 3.48 to 12.48, the lowest in the 49 countries. The total number of companies in the ETFs is 424.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you look at the countries, it seems pretty scary to invest them. They are “unknown” or “dangerous” countries to invest in. But it seems like “there are blood in the street” in these countries, and that’s why these ETFs are cheap.
All 424 companies or all 10 countries have to be totally wiped out to lose all money. So it is highly unlikely to lose all the money, investing in them. I am not sure if this idea will work out in 2020, I will compare the results with ACWI at the end of the year.
Disclosure: I do not have any positions in any of these ETFs at the point of writing this post.
Disclaimer: www.engboonhow.com is an opinion based website. I am not a financial advisor, and the opinions on this site should not be considered as financial advice.