Growth at a reasonable price (GARP) investing seeks to find companies that have strong earnings growth at a good price. GARP investing blends growth and value to create a better way to invest. Value investing is the strategy of selecting stocks that trade for less than their intrinsic value. Value investors actively seek stocks of companies that they believe the market has undervalued. They believe the markets overreact to good and bad news, causing stock price movements that do not correspond with the company’s long-term fundamentals. The result is an opportunity for value investors to profit by buying when the price is deflated.
Although it is often said that growth investing and value investing are diametrically opposed, a better way to view these two strategies is to consider a quote by Warren Buffett: “growth and value investing are joined at the hip.”
So what determines value from an investor’s perspective? That usually depends on the perspective of the investor. Some look at current measures such as the Price/Earnings ratio (P/E) and other measures that focus on the current financial situation. Others look to future cash flows discounted at some rate to arrive at a value estimate based on future financial performance. The point of this analysis is to try to find stocks cheap in comparison to what they should be worth.
So how does an investor, who recognizes that GARP is a rational way to invest, get started? The first thing to understand is just how efficient are the markets. When you sell a stock, somebody else believes in the stock and buys it. Conceptually, one of these investors is wrong about the stock. This is not always true, as one investor could be in for the short term and the other in for the long run and both can win. The investor selling might need the money for another investment. However, in many cases the market is efficient, with one investor right and the other wrong about the stock. Therefore, if you want to win most of the time, you want to structure things so you are on the right side of the trade
The questions a GARP investor needs to ask are where I can find the best opportunities and how can I get on the right side of the trend. This isn’t just buying the cheap stocks that have a chance to move up based on statistical probability. A GARP investor is looking for companies that meet proven value assessment criteria and that offer the best potential for growth.
Search for quality companies that are out of favor, yet still possess good fundamentals and that offer a catalyst for growth. You want to find good bargains. As Bruce Greenwald, a Professor at Columbia says, “You also need to answer the question from the stand point of the market psychology. Why am I the only one looking at this stock? Is there something wrong with it, or does the market just not understand it?”
The search for growth at a reasonable price or GARP investing can use a number of criteria. The strategy is to look for good businesses that earn more relative to the price being paid than others. Then they look for a reason the company will grow their revenues and earnings more than is currently expected.