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It's easy to match the overall market return by buying an index fund. When you buy individual stocks, you can make higher profits, but you also face the risk of under-performance. That downside risk was realized by Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust plc (LON:SBSI) shareholders over the last year, as the share price declined 11%. That's well below the market decline of 1.3%. Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust may have better days ahead, of course; we've only looked at a one year period.
With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.
See our latest analysis for Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust
To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).
Unfortunately Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust reported an EPS drop of 49% for the last year. This fall in the EPS is significantly worse than the 11% the share price fall. So the market may not be too worried about the EPS figure, at the moment -- or it may have expected earnings to drop faster.
You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).
This free interactive report on Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
A Different Perspective
Given that the market gained 1.3% in the last year, Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust shareholders might be miffed that they lost 10% (even including dividends). While the aim is to do better than that, it's worth recalling that even great long-term investments sometimes underperform for a year or more. The share price decline has continued throughout the most recent three months, down 3.1%, suggesting an absence of enthusiasm from investors. Basically, most investors should be wary of buying into a poor-performing stock, unless the business itself has clearly improved. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. For example, we've discovered 3 warning signs for Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust (1 is potentially serious!) that you should be aware of before investing here.