Like the fashion world having a collection for every season such as winter, spring, summer and the fall, the equity markets also show similar behavioural patterns, say analysts at global financial giant Citigroup's equity research unit.
While noting that cash-flow is the in-thing for deciding on stock investment in the current season, the analysts noted that decisions made on the basis of in-fashion factor have traditionally churned out better returns.
"In the same way that one may not want to be seen wearing last season's frocks, investing on last season factors may prove equally embarrassing," Citi Investment Research's Markus Rosgen wrote in a research note.
As far as stock market trends being in vogue for each season are concerned, cash flow is "king of the castle" for the current May-July period, while focus shifts to dividend from August to October, to be followed by ratios like price to sales (P/S) in November-January and then price to earnings (P/E) between February-April.
Citi analysts said that their study of seasonality in factor returns showed that "cycles are evident when it comes to which factors outperform during the quarters."
"Just like the fashion business, where the summer collection would look bad in the winter, so factors that outperform in the spring do not outperform in the fall." "Between May and July, the focus is on cash flow. The earnings are out and now it is up to the cash flow to generate growth for the year," analysts said. While P/CE (price to cash earnings) comes on the top, price-to-sales (P/S) ratio has been the worst factor for this period, they noted.