No. of Recommendations: 3
They no longer have anything at all to do with individual company fundamentals and screening. If you were last in MI going into the GFC, yeah things have changed.
I started with MI in the 90's (was not called MI then or I didn't know it). As a computer guy "naturally" with neural networks and with statistics. That was a lot of hours and work but utterly failed, was even on paper never successful enough to invest real $. From 2000 on a strategy I developed which, yes, used individual company fundamentals was super-successful, on average >30% CAGR.
If I had used them in 08 with my whole portfolio at the time, I'd be retired already - would have turned a 32% loss into about a 15% loss.
I can relate to that. It's why I abandoned MI and my for 7 years so successful strategy: Because exactly the same happened to me, wiping out a good part of the gains of the previous years, as my strategy picked the very worst loser, Homebuilders+Lenders of last resort, companies which partly fell 70% or 80% - or did cease to exist.