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O RLY?
List of AAII Stock Screens
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I have no clue why a list of AAII stock screens is pertinant here. You are just seeing the results of self selection, formulas that best match history get ranked highest, but that doesn't mean they'll be successful in the future. And the historical results aren't necessarily accurate either. Does the AAII system incorporate trading costs, taxes, and management fees?
Warren Buffett doesn't use a mechanical formula (no great investor does), so no matter how much the AAII and Hagstrom tries, those screens aren't representative of Buffett's approach.
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25% compounded annually over 19 years
25% over 19 years: Zweig Performance Ratings Category 1 stocks from May 1976 to March 1995, achieved a return of 6,793%.
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Well from 1975 to 1995, Berkshire Hathaway grew investments per share from $159 to $21,817. that's an increase of 13,621% and it's AFTER all taxes and fees and all transaction costs. These are real world audited results, not the on paper result of a backtested formula, or claimed results by a secretive investment operation.
And Buffett's results were even better before 1975, and are still pretty good after 1995. His job has gotten ever more difficult as Berkshire's capital has grown, which makes his results even more stunning (right now he's responsible for investing over $100B).
I don't know what audited results Zweig actually produced. I don't know how much money he actually managed. It's orders of magnitude easier to beat the market managing $1M than it is managing $10B. I don't know why he stops claiming results after 1995. I don't know why he picked 1976 as a start date. Buffett's yearly results from 1976-1985 were 59.3%, 31.9%, 24.0%, 35.7%, 19.3%, 31.4%, 40.0%, 32.3%, 13.6%, and 48.2%. It was a good time to be picking stocks.
Before you fall in love with Zwiegs formulas, you should have good answers to all those questions. He oversees
the Zweig Fund which has an annualized return of 7.6% per year since 1986, and a negative 2% per year return over the last 5 years. So his approach is so good, why is his real world fund having such a horrible run over the last two decades?