Also, do the short selling guru screens inverse the price falls to give positive returns? The negative returns on most of them would suggest they don't, however the "James Montier Trinity of Risk Screen" has returned +97.6% in the past 5 years!
The guru screens don't include dividends which I think is wrong especially on Income ones. Re short screens as far as I know they are not inversed so a positive is in fact a lost.
Thanks for your reply herbie47. It does make it more difficult to compare income to growth strategies with no dividends included. Hopefully it will be something that will be added in the future
The other issue with the Guru screens is they are adjusted quarterly, so the shares that are showing now may not even be included in the screen, so it makes comparisons difficult. Having said that some screens do work pretty well. I have used the William O'Neil CAN-SLIM-esque screen, it has not performed well recently in this market but in a bull market it is one of the best performers. I also make my own screens up.
Can't argue with the CAN-SLIM screen's 91% return before dividends over 5 years. Personally, I'm a fan of Jim Slater's Zulu Principle. That screen has done very well, and has one of the lowest max drawdowns as well. With Uk stocks going sideways or down at the moment I think i might concentrate on good value companies with good yields. Should be simple to screen for.
The Guru screens are certainly very useful in determining what styles work; but clearly don't tell the whole story if dividends aren't included.
Certain Gurus e.g. John Neff use dividends as part of their strategy and insist on above average yields. The FTSE 100's yield is 4.5% adding this to his 13.6% performance for one year would bring him up to 18.1% and probably put him in third place for the year.
Similarly some Gurus are traders rather than investors and have much higher transaction costs which aren't factored in at all. Certainly William O Neil comes to mind because of his reliance on stop losses and momentum following which involves a lot of changing horses.
Yes was looking at the Zulu screen yesterday, has done well even in the last year. I'm looking at higher yield shares at the moment, when things settle down I will be buying more growth/momentum shares again.
I had a look at the John Neff screen, only 6 shares selected currently but 4 of them are russian companies. That can be a problem with some screens, too many of what I call "foreign" companies, which I tend to avoid.
Yes I agree some screens will have high trading costs.
From the Neff screen description: "Although he didn't like the term, Neff was a contrarian investor buying good companies with moderate growth and high dividends while out of favour, and selling them once they rose to fair value."
Looks like Neff would be a fan of SCS (LON:SCS), Steady growth, P/E of around 8 and 7.5% div yield.
