Value Is Beating Growth by Over 30 Points in 2026

Value Is Beating Growth by Over 30 Points in 2026

Through 5 November, the Russell 1000 Value index has returned 24.3% this year. Growth has returned -6.4%. The gap is more than 30 percentage points.

That is wider than 2000, the year the dot-com bubble began to unwind, when Value led Growth by about 27 points. That had been the widest margin in more than thirty years. If the year ended here, the record would change hands.

The phrase "value is beating growth" does not quite describe what happened, because the two indices are no longer two different sets of companies. After June's index reconstitution, Apple and Microsoft appear in both, and the value index picked up more technology exposure. The growth index has gone the other way and become more concentrated, with a handful of names carrying more than half its weight, most of them tied to the same AI data-centre trade.

So the 30-point gap looks less like a rotation between styles and more like one crowded bet coming loose. Value is winning this year largely because the banks, health-care firms and energy producers inside it were never part of that bet.

Two things will shape the final number. The year is not over, and from the end of this year the index moves to two reconstitutions a year, so the annual return will span different membership lists.

Source: YCharts index total returns, FTSE Russell reconstitution notes and index-concentration analysis from several firms (Image: @charliebilello)