catalyzed by the release of the first commercially available semiconductor in 1971. Due to the cumulative nature of knowledge, this acceleration has resulted in an exponential increase in humankind’s total knowledge.
The Knowledge Effect is grounded in academic literature. It was first discovered in a series of studies in the 1990s where NYU’s Baruch Lev analyzed 20 years of financial data and discovered an association between a firm’s level of knowledge capital and its subsequent stock performance. Further research advanced the findings, and in 2005, Lev proved the existence of a market inefficiency attributable to missing information about corporate knowledge investments. This phenomenon leads highly innovative companies to deliver persistent abnormal returns.
Knowledge Leaders Capital seeks to capture the Knowledge Effect using a proprietary process designed to overcome the informational shortcomings of traditional financial statements. Our methodology capitalizes corporate knowledge investments, measures firm performance on a knowledge-adjusted basis, and selects investments on the basis of knowledge intensity.
