Who can blame them? The global market has had the stabilisers on since 2009, courtesy of monetary policy and an encouragement to embrace risk. These are the ideal conditions for growth investing and the market has been ready and willing to reward companies which can grow in what has been an anaemic environment.

Growth funds tend to have three key characteristics: they are usually priced at a premium to the broader market with investors hoping they can sell them on at a higher price; they tend to achieve high earnings growth regardless of economic conditions; and they are usually more volatile than the wider market.

Investors buying into this growth mantra have been rewarded. The Russell 3000 Value Index underperformed the growth index by over 9% in 2015. But with markets at an all-time high could paying for growth at any price soon become a thing of the past? In terms of market cycles, good periods for value tend to come when the market peaks and then pulls back.  This this is when cheap stocks become an attractive alternative, as evidenced in the aftermath of the dotcom bubble.

Value investing has had its moments over the past decade but these have usually come after periods of poor performance. It strongest years — 2009 and 2012/2013 — have followed a year of poor performance. The year 2015, for example, was not a good one for value investing.

Growth and value cycles also tend to be mean reverting and traditionally last between seven and 10 years. Growth is now in its ninth year of outperformance which, coupled with the record intraday high reached by the FTSE 100 in October, could be an indication that the move to value may not be far away.

The value style of investing — the idea of buying companies  that look cheap compared to fundamentals such as earnings, cash flow or book value – has been facing constant challenges since 2007 when many banks showed up as value stocks having traded on low multiples. More recently, they have been held back by the cyclical aspect of low interest rates and the last vestiges of a QE-fuelled rally. But this could soon change.

If markets do shift towards value, today’s strugglers could easily become tomorrow’s frontrunners and some could argue the trend has already begun. But finding the right fund can be a challenge as value investing often falls into the contrarian investor strategy. We only need look at the returns of the six funds dubbed recovery in the UK All Companies sector over the past 12 months to gain an insight into how diverse value investing performance can be. While the strongest performer has returned 24.3%, the lowest has returned 1.3%. The average fund in the UK All Companies sector has returned 8.1% during that time.

Academic studies suggest value investing has historically performed but for investors to take advantage they must give managers time and accept underperformance over shorter-term frames in order for their style to bear fruit. Giving active managers time to perform may never be more important. unshaven girls как получить займ онлайн без отказазайм 50 тысяч рублей на картупервый займ без процентов отзывы