In Search of Value

So we have seen how the stock market is not really as bubbled up as it seems looking at it from 30,000 feet.  What are we to do, though?   What are we supposed to buy?  Where are we to look?

I mentioned that I would do a close-up look at the components of the S&P 500 index stocks like I did for the Dow 30 in my previous post.  I will do that.  I'll probably look at all of the major indices.

But a thought crossed my mind as I sat to figure out how to do the S&P 500 index.  It was a pain to go look for the 500 listed stock tickers, load it into a program and then run it without blowing anything up.  I know, I know, 500 stocks is nothing for computers these days.  You can tell I'm not really a computer person.

Screen Superinvestor Stocks!
I sorted/ranked Buffett's large stock holdings in my last post and it was an interesting thing to look at.  I never actually looked at it that way before and then a light bulb went off in my head.  What about doing that for all the great investors?  Go 'get' the holdings of all the great investors, scrape the financials on them and then rank/sort them.

A lot of us look at screens from time-to-time (or all the time for some), but I sort of get tired of screens because you get all the crappy stocks that you already know about and have no interest in show up all the time at the bottom of the barrel.

Many of us also spend a lot of time looking at the holdings of the investors we admire.

So by putting these two things together, we get a great screen; even the cheapest stocks are good enough, or there is something there, for a Superinvestor to own it.  So in that sense, the Superportfolio is pre-screened by the best investors.

And there is a great resource for this sort of thing.

Most of you readers know Dataroma.  It's a great website that tracks the holdings of what they call the Superinvestors.

I accumulated all the holdings of the Superinvestors listed there and was surprised to learn that collectively, they own more than 1,000 stocks (excluding duplicate holdings).

I took that Superportfolio and then did what I did yesterday; got the financial information and then ranked them according to various measures.

Here are the results of that:

Superinvestor Stock Rankings

I initially posted a crude version of this, just cutting and pasting off of a spreadsheet and it looked really awful, so I redid this and embedded an actual spreadsheet.  This is much easier to deal with and looks much better.

Anyway, this is sort of a different kind of post than I usually do, and I know it will be worthless to many who don't like long lists (what the heck am I supposed to do with that?!).  And others that love lists may enjoy it.

Either way, judging from the output from these screens, whatever we think about the stock market, I think there is a lot of work to be done.


Some Notes
Some names were left out.  Stocks with ticker symbols with a dash were left out as my program ran it with periods (BRK.B instead of BRK/B).  I can fix that for future runs, but there weren't that many names anyway so it's not a big deal and it wasn't worth redoing today. Also, if the data was missing, the name is not on the list.  For example, if a name didn't have an EV/EBITDA number (showed NA), it is not on the EV/EBITDA list.

Also, keep in mind that these are investments of the Superinvestors so these ranks may not mean as much.  Many Superinvestors look at and buy stuff based off of things that don't screen well (hidden assets, adjusted free cash, normalized earnings, understated earnings, events etc).