Broad
The most companies and no fund: the whole book is shares, the best-ranked holding the largest and each place down a step smaller.
For an investor who wants the ranking without borrowed exposure.
The record
Growth on money invested at the start, across 57 six-month periods from Jan 1998, net of costs, against the S&P 500 Total Return. It is ahead over ten years and the full record, and behind over one year and five years. Ahead in 65% of individual six-month periods. The worst fall is measured on the half-yearly marks; marked at every month-end it was -43%. How these figures are calculated.
Sectors, weights and the number of positions are published. The company names are what the subscription is for. €19 a month after a seven-day trial, cancel any time.
What this cut holds
The same four measures, applied more strictly. Side by side with the 500 companies the book is drawn from: these businesses turn more of what they own into cash, hand more of it back for the share price, and publish their accounts sooner.
| Typical holding | Cash on assets | Free cash flow yield | Gross profit on assets | Days to file results |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All 500 companies | 11.25% | 3.64% | 25.10% | 31 |
| Broad | 20.59% | 6.53% | 52.22% | 23.5 |
Each figure is the middle company in the group, so a single outlier cannot move it. Individual scores and the order of the ranking are not published.
Do I have to wait for the next review to start?
Not strictly, but for this book it has paid to. The list is built from accounts filed months earlier, so a few weeks either way changes little to which companies it holds. Below is what Broad actually returned when bought late instead of on the day it was published, measured across 57 resets and annualised so the holding periods compare.
| If you had bought | Ahead of the index by |
|---|---|
| On publication day | +5.85% a year |
| 1 month later | +4.85% a year |
| 3 months later | +6.52% a year |
| 5 months later | +3.48% a year |
On Broad the later rows are worse, and not in a way that looks like noise — the advantage does fade across the six months. If you are starting mid-period, it is worth waiting for the next reset. Buying nearer the reset still leaves you better off, for the plain reason that the money was invested for longer.
Required disclosures · producer, method, ratings, conflicts
- Producer
- Purple Turtle, a research publication produced in a personal capacity in Denmark. Not authorised or supervised by Finanstilsynet: general investment research published identically to every reader does not require authorisation. The legal person behind Purple Turtle is named in full on the terms page.
- Completed and first disseminated
- Ranking completed on 31 July 2026, using filings and prices available on that date — it cannot have used anything later. The books in this edition were built from that ranking under the revised method described on the method page, completed on 1 October 2026, and first published on 1 October 2026. They replace the books previously published for this ranking. The holdings, their weights are fixed until the next ranking on 31 January 2027. Share prices shown alongside them are refreshed daily and are not part of the ranking.
- Methodology
- The 500 largest US companies by market value, excluding financials and utilities, are ranked on four measures: cash return on assets, free cash flow against price, gross profit against assets, and days taken to file quarterly results (reversed). Ranks are added with equal weight. This book holds 20 companies from the top of the ranking: a holding is kept while it ranks in the top 40, and empty places go to the highest-ranked companies not already held. Each company is weighted by its place in the book, the best-ranked largest. It holds no fund. The bottom 250 are published as the exclusion list. No price targets are issued and no forecasts are made. Only accounts already filed with the regulator are used, plus 60 days. Full method.
- Rating scale and frequency
- Two ratings only: held (in the published book) and not held (removed). A company can be neither, and most are. There is no buy, sell or hold rating and no target price. Ratings are reviewed twice a year, in January + July, and do not change in between except where a company ceases to trade.
- Rating distribution
- Of the 500 companies covered this period: 4% held, 50% not held, and 46% neither — ranked above the exclusion line but outside this particular book. This publication covers the 20-company book.
- Holdings and conflicts
- The producer does not currently hold the published portfolios, and any position taken in a covered company will be disclosed with the ranking it concerns. No trade is made in any covered company from five trading days before publication to two trading days after. No position exceeds 0.5% of any issuer's share capital. No compensation of any kind has been received from any issuer, and no issuer has been shown this material before publication.
- Nature of this material
- General investment research, produced to a fixed method and published identically to every reader. It is not a personal recommendation: no assessment has been made of any reader's circumstances, objectives, or financial situation. Facts are distinguished from estimates throughout, and past performance does not predict future results. Your capital is at risk. Two of the books hold a leveraged fund, so their losses can be larger and come faster than the index's, and the fund's part of the backtested record is modelled from the index — calibrated to the real fund's record since 2010 — rather than taken from its market price.
- Availability
- Offered to residents of the EU, EEA and United States. Not offered to UK persons.