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You are here: Home / Investing / How Do Stocks Perform After Stock Splits?

August 25, 2020 By Joe Marwood 2 Comments

How Do Stocks Perform After Stock Splits?

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding the impact of stock splits.

With two of the biggest names (Apple and Tesla) announcing splits you might be wondering about their significance. Especially since both stocks have already run up a huge amount since March. 

In theory, a stock split does nothing to change the underlying value of a company so it shouldn’t have any real impact.

But the truth is, stock splits and reverse splits do provide some insights.

For example, the following table shows that stocks undergoing splits have outperformed their peers since 1990:

stock splits results 1

The chart below shows it more clearly:

stock splits analysis chart 1

Summary

Stocks that have undergone splits have generally outperformed their peers over the medium to long term.

For example, in the S&P 100, I counted 172 stock splits, and the average return after 180 days was 11.68%. Meanwhile, the average return for all stocks was only 8.99%. That’s an outperformance of almost 3%.

Similarly, there were 905 splits in the S&P 500 and the average return over 180 days was 11.7% for those stocks compared to 9.08% for all stocks.

It was a similar story for stocks from the Russell 3000 universe where stock split stocks recorded a 11.83% average return compared to 9.90% for all stocks.

Reverse Stock Splits

We can do a similar analysis for reverse stock splits. As you can see in the table below, average returns are generally poor after a reverse split:

reverse stock splits results 1

The next chart shows it more clearly:

performance of reverse stock splits chart

Summary

The analysis on reverse stock splits differs substantially to ordinary splits.

In the Russell 3000, I counted 295 reverse splits going back to 1990 and there is a clear under performance.

For example, stocks undergoing reverse splits saw a 90-day average loss of -4.77%. Meanwhile, the average return for all stocks was positive 4.67%.

Stocks undergoing reverse splits were still in negative territory after 180 days.

I counted only 22 reverse splits in the S&P 500 which is too small of a sample for any meaningful comparison in that universe.

Stock Splits At New Highs

Finally, a reader commented that it might be interesting to see the performance of stock splits on stocks that are at new highs.

As you can see from the table below, there were 589 stock splits between 1990 to 2020 while a stock was at a 252-day / 52-week high.

The average return for stock splits at new 252-day highs is greater over 30, 90 and 180 days post split. Therefore it seems that stocks that split at new highs are even better performers than those not at new highs.

Conclusions

In theory, a stock split should have no impact on the value of a company and should provide no edge over other stocks in the marketplace.

However, you can see from our analysis that stock split stocks generally outperform.

That could be because splits improve liquidity. Or it could be that a split indicates a stronger company with a better chance of continuing that strong performance.

In other words, it is closely correlated with the momentum factor. In fact, you can see that performance even improves for stock splits that take place at new 52-week highs.

Conversely, you can see that reverse stock splits are a negative indicator.

This also makes sense since a reverse split often signals a mediocre company that is struggling to make a profit or attract investors.

Often, a reverse split is undertaken because a stock has fallen in value and needs to trade above a certain price level to fulfill exchange listing requirements.

Shorting such stocks is not straightforward, however, due to borrowing costs and can be risky on an individual trade level.

What Does This Mean For Apple And Tesla?

Of course, this analysis does not mean that upcoming stock splits will necessarily be bullish events for Apple or Tesla. There are always going to be some stocks that buck the trend.

In fact, I thought it relevant to sign off with the example of Qualcomm which underwent a 4:1 stock split on the 31st December 1999, right at the peak of the Dotcom bubble:

Notes

Analysis in this article produced in Amibroker with data from Norgate. Data includes historical constituents, delisted stocks, dividends and ignores transaction costs. Some splits/ reverse splits may have been missed. We chose to focus on splits with a ratio no less than 3:2 and ignored less meaningful splits.


Thank You For Reading

joe marwood profile pictureJoe Marwood is an independent trader and the founder of Decoding Markets. He worked as a professional futures trader and has a passion for investing and building mechanical trading strategies. If you are interested in more quantitative trading strategies, investing ideas and tutorials make sure to check out our program Marwood Research.


Disclaimer

This post expresses the opinions of the writer and is for information or entertainment purposes only. It is not a recommendation or personalised investment advice. Joe Marwood is not a registered financial advisor or certified analyst. The reader agrees to assume all risk resulting from the application of any of the information provided. Past performance, historical or simulated results  are not a reliable indicator of future returns and may not account for real world settings. Financial trading is full of risk and margin trading can lead to financial losses totalling more than what is in your investment account. We take care to present accurate analysis but mistakes in backtesting and presenting of analysis regularly occur. Please read the Full disclaimer.


Comment Policy

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment. Your feedback, constructive criticism and identification of mistakes is welcome. In order to concentrate on work I may not have time to respond to all comments.

Filed Under: Investing, Stocks Tagged With: investing, stocks

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. David Atherton says

    August 26, 2020 at 8:25 am

    Good, you saved me doing it myself. Note AAPL will drop to 1/5 weight in DJIA which is very significant for things like NDX/DJIA rotation research.

    Reply
    • Joe Marwood says

      August 26, 2020 at 8:45 am

      Good point thanks.

      Reply

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About The Author

Joe Marwood is an independent trader and investor specialising in financial market analysis and trading systems. He worked as a professional futures trader for a trading firm in London and has a passion for building mechanical trading strategies. He has been in the market since 2008 and working with Amibroker since 2011.

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