By Aaron Task
Editor’s Note: Today, we are excited to share a piece from award-winning financial journalist Aaron Task. You may know him from his work at Fortune and Yahoo Finance. He is currently attending our annual Investment U Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. Below, he shares some insights from the big event… and why the mood among attendees and presenters is so overwhelmingly positive.
The annual Investment U Conference kicked off Wednesday, and watching the presentations from Alexander Green and others, I was struck by the overriding sense of optimism and opportunity. It’s quite different from most of the financial commentary you hear these days, which is mostly about how the world is about to end – at least for investors.
So I thought it would be interesting to compare today’s market to the 1990s dot-com era, which pretty much sets the standard for a modern stock market mania.
The comparison is even more compelling because this month marks two major milestones for the stock market:
March 8 was the eight-year anniversary of the start of the current bull market, which has sent major averages surging to record highs, sending the Dow above 21,000 and the S&P 500 above 2,400 at their recent peaks.
March 10 was the 17-year anniversary of the peak of the 1990s dot-com boom, when the Nasdaq breached 5,000 for the first time. After the tech bubble burst, it took more than 15 years for the index to get back to 5,000 (and now beyond).
These two milestones are important because there are a lot of comparisons between today’s market and the go-go 1990s. But just because the stock market is up a lot – about 250% from its March 2009 lows and more than 10% since Donald Trump’s victory – that does not mean it’s in a bubble.
Let’s talk about valuations. If you follow the financial media, you’ve probably heard about P/E ratios and the so-called Shiller P/E, or CAPE (cyclically adjusted P/E ratio). Created by Yale professor Robert Shiller, CAPE measures the market’s valuation based on inflation-adjusted earnings for the past 10 years. The idea is to smooth out one-time events (good and bad) that can warp the numbers.
And on that Shiller P/E basis, today’s market is expensive. In fact, it’s the third most expensive the market has ever been. But here’s the rub… The stock market was 44% MORE expensive on this basis back in early 2000.
One more (big) factor that’s often overlooked by the talking heads and the doomsayers is the value of stocks relative to bonds. The earnings yield of the S&P 500 (the inverse of its P/E) is currently 3.75%, not far from where it was in early 2000.
The kicker? Back then, the 10-year Treasury was yielding a devilish 6.66% vs. a mere 2.50% today.
In other words, investors are being rational today by betting on stocks when bond yields are so relatively paltry. By contrast, stocks were dramatically overvalued compared to the risk-free return offered by bonds back in 1999 to 2000, and yet all anyone …read more
Source:: Investment You
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