What is the point in investing in value stocks if they behave worse than their sector?
u/shaggy98 ·
Reddit — r/ValueInvesting
· July 09, 2026 at 16:39
· ⬆ 19 pts
· 💬 42 comments
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Summary
The author shares frustration that their selected value stocks (e.g., SO, PEP, SNY, PFE, MSFT, ADBE, BRK.B) have underperformed their respective sector ETFs, falling more and recovering worse.
Their thesis is that value stocks do not provide the expected downside protection or recovery advantage, and that sector performance is driven by a few high-flyers, making stock-picking futile.
Quality assessment: This is anecdotal noise / speculative venting, not a well-researched due diligence post. It lacks data, metrics, or systematic analysis.
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I tried in the last year to buy companies that had better fundamentals and are cheaper than their sector, only to find out that they are falling more than their sector and are worse at recovery, and only by a lot of luck I get better performance than their sector.
For example Southern Company vs Utilities (bought in December)
Pepsi vs Consumer Staples (bought in May)
Sanofi vs Health (bought in December)
Pfizer vs Health (bought in May)
Microsoft and Adobe vs Tech sector (bought in february)
Even Berkshire is moving more like the rest of the Financials sector.
I don't know if I'm very bad at picking stocks, but it looks like every time a sector is going up is because of only 1-2 stocks and is very hard to guess them. And most of the time these are not the cheapest and the stocks with strongest fundamentals. And the rest of 90 - 95% of the stocks are moving with the same speed as the sector or are underperforming.
So in this case, why I should bother to pick value stocks? Or I'm doing something wrong in how I pick stocks?