In our previous post Do Indian stock markets bounce off PE levels of 12 & 24?, we found that there was some degree of truth in this statement. Indian markets do seem to bounce off PE levels of 12 and 24. And we also found that an average investor can use this information to make money (read more than 25% pa) by buying at low PEs and selling at high PEs (click hereto see summarized results). As already mentioned towards the end of that post, we decided to check market returns for other PE combinations as well. The reason for choosing multiple bands will be given later. We eventually selected 5 different sets of PEs –
- Buy at PE12 & Sell at PE24
- Buy at PE13 & Sell at PE23
- Buy at PE14 & Sell at PE22
- Buy at PE15 & Sell at PE21
- Buy at PE16 & Sell at PE20
Before we give the results, we would like to share the methodology we used for our calculations. In first case, starting with Rs 10,000, we invested in index when it first touched PE12 and sold out completely when it first touched PE24. Now we waited for markets to once again correct to levels of PE12 and invested all proceeds from our previous sale. Again we sold off completely at PE24. The process was repeated as long as possible. And this process was repeated for all the above mentioned PE combinations. The results are as follows –
As you can see, the returns are somewhat above average. 🙂 The lower you buy and higher you sell, better are the returns. We also did not feel that it was a good idea to keep PE bands smaller than 4 (PE16-PE20 range). It would have only resulted in an increase in number of buy-sell transactions (and reduction in returns).
It should also be noted that though highest returns are achieved in band 12-24, the markets are generally not available in those ranges for long periods. For example, markets spent less than 5% of the time below PE levels of 13 in last 13 years. An investor may not get ample opportunity to invest at such low valuations. Also seen from graph below, markets do not spend too much time in the extreme areas. They correct themselves. Indian markets spend most of their time in PEs ranging from 17-21. This is the reason we decided to use PE bands which provide an investor with more opportunities to enter and exit the markets.
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| Percentage of time spent by Indian markets at various PE levels – Last 13 years |
We had also planned to assign lesser weightage to returns earned in 2003-2008 bull phase as we believed that same irrational momentum may not be repeated in future. But we decided otherwise. The reason is that whatever weight (less than 1) we would have attached to this period, it would have been based on assumptions, which in turn would have been biased and subjective. It would have resulted in reduction of returns to more normal levels and would have also increased the mathematical complexities of these results. You can very well reduce these results by 50% and still get market equaling returns. But purpose of this post is not to give the exact returns upto two decimal places but to prove that buying at lower PEs and selling at higher PEs is a (once again) proven approach of earning good (if not market beating) returns.
Caution – The results may look amazing but beware that these are theoretical results. They may differ significantly from real world results.
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