Monday, March 19, 2007

Buy the best?

One widely recognized and easily digested measurement of corporate quality is the annual Fortune list of "Most Admired" companies, which could be an easy and valuable investing tool. Academic research shows that money invested in the Fortune most-admired companies would have outperformed the S&P 500 (PDF file) by a tidy margin between 1983 and 2004.

That seems to suggest it'd be in your best interests to bet on these companies yourself, except for one little detail: The "Least Admired" companies provided even better returns.

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