2016 proved to be a challenging year for active investing. Against a backdrop of a sharp selloff in equities at the beginning of the year and political uncertainty over the course of the year, valuation was the only fundamental investing style that delivered positive excess returns.

In this report, we review the performance of S&P Global Market Intelligence’s four U.S. stock selection models in 2016. Given the weak performance of all other fundamental styles, apart from valuation, it was a difficult year for our models. Three of the four models underperformed their benchmarks in 2016, the first annual underperformance since the models’ launch in January 2011.