The illustration of sex-appeal or fashion-appeal alludes to immediate or temporal attributes. Indeed, the is much appeal (and boasting rights) to short-term gains associated with new technologies and over-subscribed initial public offerings. Much of this can be attributed to the rational pursuit of a lower-cost of capital, which is the by-product of expanded valuation multiples. It can be associated, too, with broad market psychology weight, as the aggregate market capitalization of growth-style mutual funds is more than three times the aggregate market capitalization of value-style mutual funds. There is also a survivor's bias in growth investing, where long-term growth is associated with superior business quality and higher sustained returns on capital.

Value, however, exhibits the advantage of investing with relatively low expectations, averting the consequence of multiple compression and earnings disappointment that make growth investing more volatile that value investing. Value investing, also, benefits in the total return contest from the contribution of excess capital returned to investors in the form of either dividends or share repurchase. A behavioral observer might award additional points to the value school for having better analytical understanding of underlying fundamentals (if for no other reason than that value investors have on average a longer holding period compared to growth investors), and also that value investing often provides multiple ways to realize a profit (.e.g. restructuring, improved product or business cycle, industry consolidation).

Parenthetic to the Rational Man/Emotional Woman illustration, it is women's investment clubs with a conservative value style that win against men's investment clubs, who it is believed suffer from the distractions of excessive trading testosterone.

After adjusting for risk-volatility and tax treatment, it is less clear whether the winner of the performance derby is value or growth investing. Comparing 30-years of historical data between the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a proxy for value investing and the NASDAQ as a proxy for growth investing, it appears that the difference of compounded annual returns is less than 0.5%, favoring the DJIA.

By my quarter century in the capital markets, I might argue the heuristic merits of value and growth styles being equal…although not entirely due to the efficiency of markets. Rather, value investments mature more slowly and with less volatility than growth investments. This is in part due to value investors historically purchasing shares early and without a timely catalyst for appreciation. Also, this pattern relates to the value index comprising a high percentage of financial services stocks, which are valued substantially according to their underlying holdings of fixed income instruments. Allowing for sector distortions in any single 7-to-8 year business cycle (witness booms in technology, financial services, real estate, emerging markets, energy, biotech, consumer retail, railroads, et al), over multiple cycles the total returns of value and growth interweave repeatedly.

My hard won conclusion is that the best advantage for both rational and behavioral investors is GARP, with discipline. This caveat of “discipline” is to acknowledge Ms. Lamb's smart observation that “value” is poorly defined, and it is worth noting that Growth At A Reasonable Price is even less well defined by investment practitioners, and worse, that GARP is historically a red flag for damning growth and value investors for their “style drift”. It is a poor comment on the investment industry that so many so-called value investors overweighted financial services at the height of the financial services bubble because their marketing officers and consultants categorically said that being a value investor was defined as heavily weighting financial services, along with industrials and energy, regardless of these stocks' valuations or unsustainable earnings outlook.

Good GARP, when it is well-executed, is both an investment style for all seasons and a rare opportunity in securities selection. It is timely like catching lightening in a bottle. It can be as without downside as Ben Graham's net net working capital. And its single stock “ten-bagger” compounded returns over several years can cement the portfolio manager records for relative outperformance, as exemplified by Peter Lynch at Fidelity (Chrysler) and Bill Miller at Legg Mason (America On Line).