Quality Investing in an Australian Context

Abstract

This study extends an examination of Quality investing in the US (Gallagher et al., 2013) to the Australian market. Specifically, a Quality score is computed as the aggregate of eight fundamental accounting metrics. An investment strategy investing in the highest (lowest) quality stock quintile i.e. Quintile 5 (1) generates an average annual DGTW-adjusted alpha of 6.37% (-7.98%), which is significant at the 5% level over April 2000-March 2010. A two-way segmentation based on size first, and quality second, reveals that the strong positive quality effect is primarily driven by small stocks, as the average DGTW-alpha for the top quality tercile of small stocks is 14.02%, significant at the 5% level. Statistically significant positive DGTW-alphas are also determined for quality micro and large stocks. The quality analysis is also applied to a sample of Active Equity Mutual Funds’ stock holdings. Weak evidence of the quality return premium is detected at the fund level.