Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Value investors often regard themselves as the grown ups in the room, the “sensible” investors in a market that is driven by fads and whims. In this session, we look at the returns earned by value investors and find little cause for celebration. Active value mutual funds underperform value index funds by more than active growth mutual funds underperform their index counterparts. While there are pockets of outperformance among individual and activist value investors, the overall conclusion that we reach is that active value investing does not deliver on its promise. We close the session by looking at possible reasons for this gap between promise and practice.
Playlist for class (Intro + 42 sessions): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUkh9m2BorqnZGADa8cTzeJblmrZY_SqP&si=zI2pk17pJeld4nWR
Slides: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/invphilslides25/session16.pdf
Post-class test: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/invphilcertificate/postclass/session16test.pdf
Post-class solution: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/invphilcertificate/postclass/session16soln.pdf
Value investors often regard themselves as the grown ups in the room, the “sensible” investors in a market that is driven by fads and whims. In this session, we look at the returns earned by value investors and find little cause for celebration. Active value mutual funds underperform value index funds by more than active growth mutual funds underperform their index counterparts. While there are pockets of outperformance among individual and activist value investors, the overall conclusion that we reach is that active value investing does not deliver on its promise. We close the session by looking at possible reasons for this gap between promise and practice.
Playlist for class (Intro + 42 sessions): youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUkh9m2BorqnZGADa8cTzeJblmrZY_SqP&si=zI2pk17pJeld4nWR
Slides: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/invphilslides25/session16.pdf
Post-class test: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/invphilcertificate/postclass/session16test.pdf
Post-class solution: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/invphilcertificate/postclass/session16soln.pdf
