Growth Investing
Growth Investing Definition
Growth Investing refers to capital allocation in potentially high-earning companies such as small caps, startups etc. that grow much faster than the overall industry or mature companies. As the returns in such investments are high, the risk faced by such investors is higher too.
Examples of Growth Investing
Portfolio A and Portfolio B consist of four stocks each. At the same time, portfolio A has given a return of ~28% and portfolio B has generated a return of ~7.5% during the bull market scenario. Portfolio A consists of blue chips and growth stocks, while portfolio B consists of defensive stocks, whose profitability grows less than the GDP.
The index has generated a return of 13.5% during the time span. Thus, we may conclude that during good times portfolio A will surpass the index return during a good bull market, while defensive stocks will generate a return which is less than the index.
During the recession, we have seen that the price to earnings metrics tends to erode, irrespective of the quality of the stocks because of the negative investor’s sentiment. Thus, richly valued blue-chip stocks become cheaper because the market will discount the overall sentiment and will drive the price lower. On the other hand, slow growers or defensive categories tend to remain in the same range.
The reason is that irrespective of the market conditions, the price to earnings multiples or other valuations metrics remains low for these categories of stocks. So, during economic recessions or slowdown, these slow growers resist the drawdown of the portfolio.
Advantages
- 1. Growth Investing includes stocks that have the potential to provide high returns to investors. The potential of stock price movement is directly correlated with the profitability growth of the company. The higher the growth, the higher the return.
- 2. As the return is high, the risk-to-reward ratio, as well as return on investment (ROI) remains on the higher side.
- 3. Capital appreciation is one of the primary aspects of growth Investment. Unlike other Investment methodologies, the return from this particular segment is the maximum as the primary focus remains on blue-chip, growth companies, stalwart or market leader categories and not on the defensive stocks.
Disadvantages
- 1. In the growth investing approach, the fund managers concentrate on the future growth of the businesses and give the least focus on the valuation of the stocks like preference on the price to earnings, enterprise value to EBITDA price to book of the stocks.
- 2. In most cases, the focus becomes on the blue-chip, stalwart or market leader or various small-cap or midcap categories where the valuation is on the higher side.
- 3. The risk is comparatively high compared to the other conventional approaches used in investing.
- 4. The margin of safety is comparatively low in Growth investing because funds are diverted towards growth companies that fall in the small-cap and mid- caps categories stock. Due to the changing business scenarios, the profitability of these companies becomes volatile and impacts adversely the stock prices.
- 5. During the time of economic recession, this particular approach does not help to retain the actual invested capital
