COMPANY LOCATION, RATHER THAN GROWTH, MAY LEAD TO HIGHER INVESTMENT RETURNS

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., May 20 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Investors looking for higher returns may want to focus on a company's location instead of its growth potential, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State. They found that portfolios built to consider company headquarter location and the housing market together could produce returns three times higher than portfolios focused on growth stocks alone.

The analysis, published in the Journal of Empirical Finance, incorporated real estate data to solve a longstanding finance puzzle of why value stocks - typically representing mature, stable companies in sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare - appear to c...