Crew Capital Management Thoughts on Investment

Welcome to the Crew Capital Management Thoughts on Investment blog. At Crew Capital, investment education is key to how we work with our clients. We hope our conversation and analysis entice you to think further on your investment strategies and planning. For further discussion, please contact us at rjung@crewcapital.com

Thank you!
Robert F. Jung, CFA CPA*

*CPA inactve

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

S&P 500 Overvalued?

According to the Shiller P/E ratio, the S&P 500 is now 35% overvalued — a full one standard deviation event.

The April data was just updated and showed the inflation-adjusted normalized P/E, premised on “bird-in-the-hand” (as opposed to consensus earnings forecasts, which is historically more than 20% higher than we actually get — one reason why Wall Street banks are dubbed “the sell side”) 10-year trailing profits, expanded to over 22x from 21x in March.

This is not nosebleed territory, but it is expensive; the historical average is 16.4x. So, this implies that the market is currently 34.7% overvalued benchmarked against the historical norm. It would be nice to say that a higher-than-normal P/E is justified by low inflation and low interest rates. But frankly, real bond yields are not that far from their long-run averages; however, equity valuation is, and something is going to give at some point.

Valuation metrics are not meant to be timing devices. Assets, securities, and currencies can stay overvalued for extended periods of time, but inevitably Bob Farrell’s rule number one on the concept of “mean reversion” will come into play. The operative strategy is to buy low and sell high, not the opposite; and to be paid to take on risk as opposed to be paying for taking on the risk.

Defensive income-oriented strategies, at this point, make perfect sense from our lens.

Source Article

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