Estratégia de seleção de empresas: uma análise do múltiplo preço/lucro e da margem de segurança para o mercado acionário brasileiro

Abstract

Aswath Damodaran, in his book “Investment Fables”, brings stories of investments sales that, at first sight, might seem attractive, however, when examined closely, looses its credibility. Considering the idea that a philosophy of investment based on consistent strategies and tactics is indispensable during the building of a portfolio, this study verifies if it is possible to overcome the major national market index – IBOVESPA -, at a long term, through investment strategies based on low price-earnings ratio and on the margin of safety. The reason for adopting both strategies on this study is the fact that the one based on low price-earnings ratio is restricted by not considering the growth potential and the risk of the selected companies. In fact, another portfolio has been constructed by adopting Benjamin Graham´s strategy, the margin of safety, which is capable of filtering stocks with low growth and high risk, unwanted characteristics when building a portfolio. This study suggests that it is possible to obtain a superior performance than the main national benchmark – IBOVESPA -, especially when strategies based on the margin of safety are used. The strategy based solely on the priceearnings ratio has also presented superior results than IBOVESPA, however less significant.