Bitcoin, gold, oil, real estate—many assets are finding themselves on investors’ radar screens as concerns about inflation grow. The best refuge might be one that has been out of fashion for a while, though: boring old value stocks.
Value investing had a brief moment of superior performance early this year, only to sink back into second-class status as stocks like Tesla with triple-digit earnings multiples—and many with no earnings at all—surged anew. A broad basket of cheap stocks represented by the Russell 3000 Value Index has appreciated by a respectable 80% in the past five years. Russell’s corresponding basket of growth stocks has done more than 100 percentage points better, however.
