market folly

Continuing our notes from the London Value Investor Conference 2013, the next speaker is David Harding of Winton Capital.  He presented a background of his firm's strategy and touched on what important value metrics investors should focus on.


Winton Capital is one of Europe’s largest hedge fund managers with $25bn AUM. It primarily uses a trend following/ momentum, quantitative approach across many asset classes so at first sight  Harding was an odd guest at a value conference.

After reading Joel Greenblatt’s Little Book That Beats the Market, Harding became interested in utilising value in a systematic way. He said that Winton’s research findings echoed Greenblatt’s research finding a real edge using quantitative value. Winton do incorporate a value approach into some of their trading, although it did sound  as if it was a side show compared to their main trend following approach.

The key value metrics  that Harding discussed were return on assets and earnings yield. He noted that results could be significantly improved by equal weighting stocks rather than using capitalisation weighting.


Be sure to check out other investor presentations: notes from the 2013 London Value Investor Conference.