Half Empty or Half Full?

Here’s how RE stocks have fared between the announcement of the first pandemic lockdown on March 12, 2020, and September 26, 2023.

There are two ways to look at this graph:

1. Half Full – Property stocks are trading at huge discounts, and I should buy them while the market's still down! The country's largest property developer with the biggest land bank is trading at a 23% discount from its pre-pandemic level! That's equivalently getting a Php300,000/sqm unit for just Php240,000!

2. Half Empty – How come property stocks are considerably down? The PSE index is just -1.40% down for the same period. Do investors know something I don't?

So, is the glass half empty or half full?

[The stocks presented are those that compose the PSE Property Index (ex-REITs).]