I thought that if I searched for "EPS" at MFO & MFO Home, I would get zillion hits.
But to my surprise, "EPS" got 0 hits!
Well, this post will remedy that (-:).
Posters talk about all kinds of funds and stocks here, and earnings per share or EPS cannot be ignored.
My real interest was in finding earnings-weighted ETFs. I found India EPI quickly because it has "Earnings" in its name. So, the next question was, which is the earnings-weighted US etf?
There are several US ETFs that use dividend-weights or fundamental-weights (that may include earnings or cash flow), but after reading several fund objectives, I found that etf EPS was such a fund - so obvious in hindsight. AUM $1.1 billion, ER 8 bps, 02/2007- .
Conceptually, these ETFs have the most profitable (absolute) companies.
Earnings-weight still has large-cap orientation, but it removes valuation from the picture. So, people may consider it as a market-cap-LC alternative.
Comments
but I can't seem to find a listed et fund that uses it.https://www.wisdomtree.com/investments/index/wtmei
It's EZM. EES tracks the small caps. I'll be adding them to my watch list.
Weights based on earnings per share (which is not what these ETFs do) would make about as much sense as the DJIA being share price weighted. If a Dow component has a 2 for 1 split, its weight in the index is (approximately) halved. Likewise, EPS is cut in half if a company has a 2 for 1 split.
it removes valuation from the picture.
Almost. It limits its universe to the 500 largest U.S. companies by market cap. From that point on, weightings are substantially independent of valuation. (They must also have a P/E of at least 2, a very low bar if profitable).
I might prefer an index that did a little more smoothing of earnings to avoid whipsawing. It looks only at earnings over the past four quarters. Some companies have relatively steady earnings, while others may be cyclical, running deficits for years (investing for the future) before making profits. (See nimble dividend.) I need to give it more thought.
I haven't delved too deeply into whether nonrecurring expenses (or revenue) are incorporated into the calculation of earnings¹. These could likewise whipsaw a company's weighting, decreasing (or increasing) its earnings weight for one year only.
¹ See, e.g. https://accountinginsights.org/what-are-non-recurring-charges-and-how-do-they-work/
WT uses its own indexes, so it also saves licensing fees. Self-indexing is a controversial issue.
Of course, flaws can be pointed out. But Shiller's PE10 does P/E average over 10 years and that hasn't worked in years - but that idea is appealing and sells, so remains popular.
Revenue-weights can have its own issues - profitability and market-cap vary a lot across sectors and industries, e.g. IT vs retailers. Top 5 US companies by revenue are WMT, AMZN, AAPL, UNH, BRK.
Equal-weight may generates high turnovers.
A more sensible approach would be fundamental-weighting with multiple factors as RAFI indexes do and are used by Pimco, Schwab, etc.
But as I indicated in the OP, I was looking for earnings-weighted ETFs and found them - LC EPS, MC EPZ, SC ESS.
And now, anyone looking for them at MFO will also find them.
You were "looking for earnings-weighted ETFs and found them". I'm looking for reasons to seek out such ETFs, and how well the ETFs you found meet those objectives.
In particular, I'm concerned with the effects of anomalous transient spikes in individual company's earnings. Like "pops" on a vinyl record. Here's a basic description of how a simple low pass filter can help smooth spikes like this:
into signals like this:
https://www.eetimes.com/the-math-of-dsp-part-3-filters/ (See example 1)
Shiller's PE10 does P/E average over 10 years
Shiller looks at diversified markets (e.g. S&P 500) and at sectors, not at individual companies. Merely by using market (or sector) averages he is already smoothing out individual company "pops". He uses 10 (and 20¹) year averaging is to smooth data over full business cycles (10 years serving as a proxy for a business cycle). Different focus, apples and oranges.
https://indices.cib.barclays/dms/Public marketing/Shiller10_brochure.pdf
I agree with your original statement that using earnings exclusively takes valuations out of the picture. I'm still trying to understand why one would want that.
¹ This is the first time I noticed Shiller's use of 10 and 20 year averages. My mind immediately jumped to the Nyquist-Shannon theorem (sampling must be done at at least twice the frequency of a signal being sampled, see 44.1kHz audio sampling). Just an instantaneous pattern recognition; I've given it no thought as to whether it makes sense in this context. Shiller averages PE10 ratios over 20 years to serve as a baseline.