In some of the previous combination strategies the 6-months price index was one of the best second factors to use. In this combination would like to determine if it is also a good first factor to use. We thus selected the 20% of companies with a higher 6-months price index and used only these companies when we made up the portfolios for the second factor tests.

Show/Hide details

And it turns out that using the 6-months price index as a first factor gives you a very satisfactory return. On average, across all 14 second factors we tested, the best quintile would have given you an average return of 566% (median was 610%). The best performing strategy was combining the 6-months price index with the lowest price-to-book companies. If you did this to select investments, your return over the past 12 years would have been 1157.5%.

The worst performing strategy combination would have been combining the best 6-months price index companies by the same factor again. This would have given you a return of only 122.1%.