Have we been living through a junk rally since March? New data cited by the always-interesting Mark Hulbert suggests so. But there's a great big silver lining for investors.
In last Sunday's New York Times, Hulbert wrote:
[Stocks] in the bottom fifth of [Ford Equity Research's] ratings … produced an average stock market return of 152% from the beginning of March to the end of November. … The stocks in the highest quintile for quality … produced an average gain of 66% over the same period.
Pull up some charts for evidence: Some of the more speculative stocks back in March, such as Ford (NYSE:F), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD), to pick three examples, have quadrupled since March, while Verizon (NYSE:VZ), P&G (NYSE:PG), and IBM (NYSE:IBM) have underperformed the broad market.
Hulbert found that the performance gap between high-quality and low-quality stocks was the biggest in more than three decades. Here's the silver lining for all you Verizon, P&G, and IBM owners: In relative terms, high-quality stocks are cheap right now.
So, do you think this rally was based on junk? Are "higher-quality" stocks poised to do well from this point forward? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
