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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
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Author: mungofitch ✹✺ SILVER
SHREWD
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Number: of 6243 
Subject: Re: A new Idea
Date: 07/13/23 4:31 PM
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No. of Recommendations: 15
FWIW, I tried to create a "better by ROE" group from within the Nasdaq 100 set of stocks.
Historically I have found this is a tough group to subset: it's usually better to just buy them all and be done with it!

This is my best attempt

I did this exercise with Value Line.

I don't have an exact "Nasdaq 100" membership field, so I approximated it.
At a top level view, the Nasdaq 100 is defined as the 100 largest Nasdaq-listed stocks which are not financials.
Technically it is "top 100 HTD 105", but let's ignore that.

So, to roughly approximate the Nasdaq 100 I start off with this as a universe:
Exchange is Nasdaq
Sales > 0 (Value Line does not populate the Sales field for most financials including banks, so this is a quick and dirty way to eliminate them)
Market cap top 100

Then we add the screen steps:
Ratio of price to 52-week high, top 50 (crowd source elimination of the ones crashing most at the moment)
ROE top 30
5-year sales growth rate top 20

With friction, it looks better at two month holds.

CAGR SPY 1997 to June 2023: 8.82%
CAGR All 100 stocks of my Nasdaq crudy proxy: 9.03%/year
CAGR of this 20 stocks screen, 2 month holds with 0.4% friction: 15.13%/year

My risk metric (DDD3) of SPY: 11.28%
My risk metric (DDD3) of Nasdaq 100 proxy: 15.96%
My risk metric (DDD3) of the 20 stock screen: 10.32%

Of course, the Nasdaq 100 (proxy) stocks had such wild gyrations around the tech bubble that it's more illustrative to break it down into eras

The bubble, January 97 - March 2000
Nasdaq 100 stocks up 50%/year, this screen up 47%/year: it kept up

The crash, March 2000-October 2002
Nasdaq 100 stocks down -81%, this screen -41% (figures not annualized -- the screen offered a lot of protection, but only on a relative basis)

The bungee rebound, October 2002 - November 2003
Nasdaq 100 stocks up +88%, this screen +40% (figures not annualized -- screen did not keep up: after a crash, the worst stuff always bounces best)

More normal times, November 2003 - June 2023
Nasdaq 100 stocks up +10.9%/year, this screen +14.8%/year (nice advantage in relatively normal times, at least in backtest)
This would have beat the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 equal weight about 70% of rolling years in the last ~20 years. Again, in backtest.

Some recent picks, to get a feel for what it likes
MELI VRTX NFLX NVDA GOOG ADBE LULU KLAC LRCX AMAT
CPRT AAPL MSFT IDXX CDNS SNPS NXPI COST MU CTAS

Jim
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This community has written 6,227 posts about Mechanical Investing. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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