There's a reason why people haven't had the “growth versusvalue” discussion in a while. For the past several years, bothinvestment disciplines have tracked fairly closely, if you’re tobelieve the Russell 3000 data. Since the election results, however,things have changed. Disregarding the “whys” behind this for themoment, let's instead focus on the data itself.

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The first quarter numbers from Morningstar show this vividly. Onaverage, growth funds beat value funds by just under 5 percent. Thedisparity is more pronounced in the small cap arena, where theaverage growth fund exceeded a 5.5 percent return, while theaverage value fund languished at barely above break-even, afterhaving been down more than 2 percent year-to-day just before thequarter end.

Such a variance in returns certainly prompts the more thanjustifiable return to a never-ending question of growth versus.value. The prevailing wisdom suggests that, over the long-term,although value does have a slight edge, growth does a good jobholding up its end of the bargain. But a new definition of “risk”reveals unexpected truths regarding this time-honored axiom. Doesvalue really have this so-called edge? Does growth really hold upto this new scrutiny?

Before we answer that, let's revisit this new definition ofrisk. In the old days, investment professionals focused on standarddeviation. It was easy to calculate, easy to show on a graph and,for the most part, easy to understand. There was only oneproblem—it violated common sense. No one ever really believedexceeding your goal was risky. And they most assuredly rejected thenotion that the greater your realized winnings, the greater yourrisk. There was only one real definition of risk: failing to meetyour goal.

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From this evolved the concept of “goal-oriented targets” (GOTs).GOTs focus exclusively on the true fear of every investor: missingyour target. Therefore, in assessing any return analysis, we’vedone away with standard deviations. Rather, we’ve begun to focus onwhat's termed the GOT frequency, i.e., the probability of meetingor exceeding a specific GOT.

Let's look at growth versus value in terms of GOT. We’ll use theRussell 3000 daily return data for their growth and value indices(for rolling 5-year periods ending from May 30, 2000 through March31, 2017). We find that the GOT frequency for a GOT of 0 percent(i.e., the index has a positive return) is 84 percent for value and72 percent for growth.

Yes, that's an advantage for value, but no one will reallycomplain about growth. More revealing is the GOT that yields a GOTfrequency of 50 percent, which implies half the returns are lessthan the GOT and half are more; aka, the median of all rollingfive-year returns. For the value index, that GOT is 7.14 percent (anod to Babe Ruth?). For the growth index, that GOT is 4.20percent.

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The GOT analysis shows, on average, value performs roughly 3percent better than growth. Hmm, maybe old Ben Graham was on tosomething after all.