Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Future is Now
Money and Finance

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Future is Now


Link to: The Future is Now
While the evidence may be alarming to some, make no mistake: The median price/revenue multiple for S&P 500 constituents is now significantly higher than at the 2000 market peak. The average price/revenue multiple across S&P 500 constituents is now above every point in that bubble except the first and third quarters of 2000. Only the capitalization-weighted price/revenue multiple – presently at about 1.7 – is materially below the price/revenue multiple of 2.2 reached at the 2000 peak. That’s largely because S&P 500 market capitalization was dominated by high price/revenue technology stocks in 2000. [Geek's Note: as a result, if one chooses a universe of stocks by first sorting by market capitalization, one will probably find that price/revenue multiples of those stocks are lower today than in 2000]. Regardless, the historical norm for the capitalization-weighted S&P 500 price/revenue ratio is only about 0.80, less than half of present levels. The fact is that unless current record-high profit margins turn out to be permanent, against all historical experience to the contrary, the overvaluation of the broad equity market is equal or more extreme today than it was at the 2000 bubble peak.
Investors often forget that smaller stocks struggled during the final years of the bubble as investors clamored for glamour. Again, the broad stock market was much more reasonably valued in 2000 than it is today, as extreme valuations were skewed among the largest of the large caps. Not anymore. The Federal Reserve has stomped on the gas pedal for years, inadvertently taking price/earnings ratios at face value, while attending to “equity risk premium” models that have a demonstrably poor relationship with subsequent returns. As a result, the Fed has produced what is now the most generalized equity valuation bubble that investors are likely to observe in their lifetimes.  





- Links
Mohnish Pabrai, Guy Spier, and Michael Shearn on Investment Checklists [H/T ValueWalk... This is the video and transcript from their Value Conferences appearance early in 2014.] (LINK) Related book: The Investment ChecklistRichard Muller's Physics...

- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Delusion Of Perpetual Motion
Link to: The Delusion of Perpetual Motion“I am definitely concerned. When was [the cyclically adjusted P/E ratio or CAPE] higher than it is now? I can tell you: 1929, 2000 and 2007. Very low interest rates help to explain the high CAPE. That doesn’t...

- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Increasing Concerns And Systemic Instability
Link to: Increasing Concerns and Systemic Instability With the S&P 500 just 3% below its all-time high, there’s very little change our views here. Last week’s mild retreat only looks something other than mild when viewed in the context of a late-stage...

- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Truth Does Not Change According To Our Ability To Stomach It
Our estimate of prospective 10-year nominal S&P 500 total returns has eroded to just 2.3%, suggesting that equities are likely to underperform even the relatively low returns available on 10-year Treasury bonds in the coming decade. Those estimates...

- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Sitting Ducks
The present market context is this: from a valuation standpoint, virtually every reliable measure of market valuation we observe is now within the highest 1% of historical observations prior to the late-1990’s bubble. “Reliable” in this context...



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